


Penumbra

by Saki101



Series: Penumbra [1]
Category: Dark Shadows (1966), Dark Shadows - All Media Types, Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: 221B Baker Street, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Dreams, Dreams vs. Reality, First Meetings, Ghosts, Gothic, Legends, London, M/M, Magical Realism, Music, Musical Instruments, Mythical Beings & Creatures, POV First Person, POV John, POV John Watson, Rivers, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-09
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-05-25 17:24:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 46,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6204193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saki101/pseuds/Saki101
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A gothic AU of the <i>Sherlock</i> universe inspired by the universe of <i>Dark Shadows</i> (the television series), presented in four episodes*, and written for the <a href="http://falltvseasonsherlock.tumblr.com/">Miniseries March Challenge at Fall TV Season Sherlock</a>.</p><p>Preview:  In Maine, there was Collinwood and the three centuries of history that were woven into its walls.  In London, there is Holmeswood Manor (or the Manor on Baker Street as the urban legends have it), tucked now into a city street when once its oak woods rolled from the heath to the river.  </p><p>John’s grown up with its stories of ghosts and wizards and things that hunt in the night.  They are certainly not going to keep him from interviewing for a residential post at the Manor because he cannot afford London on an army pension and there could not possibly be any truth to the tales.</p><div class="center">
  <p>***</p>
</div>*An extra chapter of missing scenes, <i>Addenda:  Baskerville & Chapalu</i>, was added in May.
            </blockquote>





	1. Meet Me at Moonrise

**Author's Note:**

> First Episode: Meet Me at Moonrise
> 
> It was an odd way to set the time for a business appointment, but people who could afford an in-house physician could afford to be eccentric John supposed and proceeded to check online to see what time the moon would rise two days hence.

**

~~~~~~oo0oo~~~~~~ 

**

**

~~~~~~oo0oo~~~~~~ 

**

Rush hour was in full spate. I hung from a strap, swayed with the rhythm of the train. Strings of words were forming in my head. 

The last bit's a new habit that I blame on my therapist. Blog, she urges. I haven't typed a single word that I didn't delete soon after, well, as soon as I figured out how to do it, but I’ve started thinking in narrative, describing experiences to myself, no matter how mundane, hoping to concoct something I can post to get a respite from her soft-voiced insistence that I should blog. 

I am never content with the words. They’re just noise about nothing. I think Shakespeare said something along the same lines. And I'm not convinced that exposing my feelings to strangers is going to banish my nightmares or make my sterile bedsit cosy and comforting. I have debates with myself about this and in my quasi-literary musings, I have found that I have a fondness for alliteration. It does help me not think of other things.

With a final lurch, the train stopped.

I limped towards the stairs and a wave of commuters swept me upwards, clinging to my cane with one hand and the handrail with the other. I was thrust through the barriers and spewed out into the crowd surging towards the station. I dodged as best I could, my knuckles white around the head of my cane. The urge to use it for more than lessening the weight on my aching leg was strong.

That sentiment won’t be going on the blog.

Willpower and the exiting throng prevailed. They bore me past the corner and over the road, leaving me washed up against the damp walls of Lloyd’s when they split three ways and thinned out. I lingered there, back pressed against the cold stone, out of the bustle of the footpath, and watched the lights at the intersection cycle from green to amber to red and back. The vehicles crept forward or halted according to their signals while the pedestrians streamed off the pavement, flooding between the cars, ignoring the danger, the traffic lights and me.

My breathing levelled out and my grip on my cane relaxed.

I took a couple steps along the bank’s Baker Street side to escape the wind gusting down Marylebone. My doubts about the wisdom of my excursion were not so easy to evade. 

I checked the sky. There was not a hint of moon. The Tube always worked best when I was not behind schedule. I squared my shoulders and headed north.

***

On the pavement outside 221B, I oscillated. The letter Mike had received requesting his help in finding a suitable candidate for the post of private physician was in my hand, ready to be presented to gain admittance when the hour arrived. I eyed the door behind which the scientist who needed his own doctor apparently resided. The illness or condition that warranted such a need had not been disclosed nor the number of individuals in the household who might require care. The possibility that the prospective employer might be a wealthy hypochondriac had crossed my mind. Worse possibilities had as well. I tapped the edge of the heavy envelope containing the letter against my thigh and willed the time to move faster.

I fell to studying the outward features of the building, inspecting its public face with sidelong glances, as if it might be offended if I stared. The door was black-painted wood inscribed with rectangles, the brass knocker and house numbers well-polished. It resembled so many doors in London. The café on the ground floor was closed. Through the darkened windows, I could see chairs upturned on the closely crowded tables. I assumed some were put out in front when it was open. The awning announced that breakfast and lunch were served. I had no memory of a restaurant being there before, but I’ve been gone a long while.

If the food was any good, I thought it would be handy having it right on the doorstep.

I frowned. I was picturing myself there. 

_Rather the point of going on a job interview, eh, Watson?_

In truth, I had been entertaining some notion of being polite to Mike Stamford by following up on his suggestion. He’d seemed so happy to see me, so pleased at the idea that he might be able to help me out.

 _Why hide it, Watson? Not only do you need a job, you’re intrigued by_ this _possibility. Take a deep breath and get on with it._

I’m early, remember? 

I did take the deep breath though and continued to scan the façade: stone at ground level, brick above, wrought iron balconies running along the first floor. An ordinary house in an ordinary terrace of houses.

_As good a place to work as any._

Better really. Central location, near a park, practically on top of a Tube station and yet…

_Something scaring you?_

My back stiffened.

I know nothing about this scientist except that he writes monographs on arcane subjects that he posts on his website, his housekeeper used to be Mike’s patient and Mike thought she was a nice lady.

_Scared._

It was an odd thing for me to think because I don’t scare easily, but snippets of the legends had been flitting through my mind since the lunch with Mike had concluded with a tour of Bart’s and a perusal of the unexpected letter he had found on his desk that morning. We had both laughed at what we could remember of the tales circulating when we were in training, especially the incident we had witnessed in the A&E when a lad had been brought in by his friends after he had shown up at a party jabbering about being chased down Baker Street by a hellhound with glowing red eyes. His mates had assumed he had got hold of some bad drugs, but one had mumbled something about the legend of the Manor on Baker Street. Although the stories were old when our grandparents were children, episodes like that one went a long way to keeping the tales alive for another generation. It would, of course, be preposterous for me to let nonsense like that keep me from pursuing a decent job lead.

I checked the sky again. The clouds were scudding west, taking the reflective glow of the city lights with them. The pavement before the house grew darker. I glanced across the street.

We used to walk up the other side of the road to rugby games in the park, my schoolmates and I, peering over the cars and between the buses, whispering to one another despite the noise of the street. What was there supposed to have been at the Manor? I thought back. What wasn’t there supposed to have been?

I shook my head.

The legends that clung to the ordinary building before me included vengeful ghosts and seductive witches, mad scientists and monsters, werewolves and warlocks, vampires and savage beasts and those were just the stories _I_ could remember. What it was about this spot that had inspired so many tales, I was never sure, because London teemed with places that boasted a bloody past and a ghost or two. 

I smiled.

My friends and I might have been guilty of augmenting the mythos a bit, passing it on to new pupils at school. I had even written down a scary story about a beautiful ghost and a lovelorn lad in the back of one of my history notebooks. Maybe everyone loves to spin a yarn.

When we were older, it had been cool to swagger close enough to the door to touch the brass knocker and if we sauntered a bit faster once we had, we didn’t call one another on it. Well, not until we were older still and thoroughly drunk by the time we left the pub on the corner after a game. 

I glanced up and down the road. I had not thought I had so many memories of this one street, but they were rushing at me thick and fast now, my very own ghosts.

There was the night Bill Murray had stopped to take a piss on the railing and the rest of us had fallen back a step or two, which was just as well. The urine had sizzled where it struck the metal and what had not risen in a pungent cloud above our heads, had spattered back all over Murray and put a stop to the proceedings. I had led Bill away while he was still struggling with his flies. He had gone very pale and I had not wanted to see what would happen if he vomited on the fence as well.

Bill had thanked me for that next time we got together and we had laughed, certain that we all must have been far drunker than we had realised. Yet we took to crossing the road up by the pub and walking to the Tube down the other side, just as my old schoolmates and I had done years before. None of us had ever talked about that part. 

Then, the years scattered us. All round the world it seemed. Murray had ended up in Afghanistan, too, and that had been lucky for me.

I reached out and touched the railing. It was cold metal with a blister or two in the black paint.

I had checked that night after leaning Murray up against a lamppost because electrifying a fence along a public street was not on and I fully intended to report it, but it had been cold then as well.

“I thought I heard someone out here.”

I snatched my hand away from the paling and turned to find an older woman smiling at me from the open doorway.

“You must be Doctor Watson,” she said, extending her hand. “You look exactly like the photo on the CV Doctor Stamford sent to my phone. It’s amazing what one can do with a phone these days.”

I smiled in agreement, switching my cane to my other hand and accepting hers. It was cool and firm, with a hint of swelling in the middle knuckle of the small finger.

“Mrs Hudson, I’m guessing,” I said as I let go. “I am sorry for loitering. I was early.”

She stepped back into the hall and gestured for me to come in. “It’s just as well. Time for a cup of tea before Sherlock gets here. He called to say he might be delayed.”

I did as bid, trying not to stare too obviously as I went. The foyer was broader than I had estimated it would be. An inner door decorated with stained glass panels hid the rest of the hall from view. Their designs were doubled in a large mirror to my right. My reflection in it was dappled with green and gold.

Behind me, Mrs Hudson closed the front door. I heard a bolt slide shut and the sounds of the street disappeared. I looked back. The inside of the door was not ordinary. Its surface was deeply carved with flowers and fruit. Half-hidden faces peered out from amidst the wooden foliage. Above them the glow of the streetlamp illuminated the frosted orb at the centre of the fanlight.

“He might make it back in time. The moon won’t be visible over the housetops for a while yet,” Mrs Hudson said, bustling past me to open the second door and ushering me deeper inside.

“It was an original way to set the hour of our meeting,” I remarked as I followed.

“Old habits,” she said. “What with watches and phones to tell the time, hardly anyone bothers to know where the sun and the moon are anymore.”

“Still relevant to some folks,” I said, the image of convoys setting out once the moon had set not so distant in my memory.

I shut the inner door gently behind me.

A glimmer above my head drew my eyes as I stepped forwards. Before me a wide staircase swept towards the upper floors. I followed its curves past more levels than it seemed the house should possess. At its apex was a dimly patterned oval that I took to be a skylight. “It’s bigger than it looks from the street,” I said.

“Everyone says that,” Mrs Hudson replied, from further down the hall, “but the manor house goes on to the corner and back to the parallel road behind us, so it isn’t surprising once you know that.” She waved towards the stairs. “Go on up, one flight. The door to the study is open. Make yourself at home. Give the fire a poke if it’s got too low. I’ll bring the tea in a few minutes.” With that she was gone, another glass door swinging shut after her.

Interesting as the information she had shared was, it didn’t explain the extra storeys. 

_The upper floors could be set back from the façade._

I pondered that as I mounted the stairs with my three-legged gait, pausing to tip my head up to gaze at the skylight more than once. I wondered if the moon would shine through it.

_Fanciful, Watson._

As promised, the door to the study was open. I halted at the threshold assessing, a habit I doubt I will ever lose. The lighting was not ideal for my purpose, the evening gloom barely dispelled by the glass-shaded reading lamps set well away from the door. To my mind, it was more a library than a study, with shelves filled with books and bibelots rising to the high ceilings between the six tall windows overlooking the street and wrapping around other doors and the fireplace on the remaining walls.

There were statues of bronze and marble poised on pedestals about the room. Various tables and chairs were grouped around low bookcases and display cabinets which seemed to hold insect specimens and animal skeletons as far as I could tell. Every surface was littered with piles of books and papers, surmounted by open journals or unrolled maps. They spoke of an ongoing occupation or one suddenly interrupted. 

I wondered what might have called my interviewer away and proceeded inside.

There was a chill in the room, the fire had indeed burned low. As I stooped to poke at the embers, I found myself eye to socket with a human skull. It rested on the mantelpiece amidst photographs and figurines and a stack of post impaled by the blade of a fine folding knife. The mirror above it reflected my wide eyes.

_Come now, doctor. You’ve seen plenty of skulls._

“They aren’t usually on people’s mantels,” I muttered and added a log to the fire.

_A minor detail._

“Fine,” I said, “we’ll see what other details the night provides.” I dusted off my hands and turned my back to the windows.

One of the double doors facing me was obligingly ajar, letting in a narrow bar of bluish light that revealed the deep reds of the Persian carpets which muffled my steps. I moved closer and opened the door wider. A profane exclamation escaped me. Before me was a laboratory, not quite as well-equipped as the labs I had toured a couple days previously at Bart’s, but damned close. On the centre table a fine microscope took pride of place. Beside it was a box of slides, two stands of stoppered test tubes and an open notebook.

Perhaps I was taking the injunction to make myself at home a bit far, but I did not seem able to resist peeking through the microscope nor reading the most recent lab notes concerning blood samples, human and otherwise, that contained pathogens which crossed species. I leaned my cane against the table and lifted one of the vials from the nearer rack, rotating it to read the writing on the label: _S. scrofa_.

“What do you think?” a deep voice enquired.

I tightened my grip on the test tube and faced the open door.

Disadvantaged by the strong lighting in the laboratory, I strained to find the source of the voice in the dim recesses of the library. What I could see through the window was that the moon had risen and shone bright between the chimney pots. A movement at the edge of the shadows caught my eye. A tall figure glided into the moonlight, his face as pale as it, his form merging with the darkness on one side, outlined by firelight on the other. A long-fingered hand appeared and then another. The figure approached, gloves in hand, his features growing clearer as the light of the laboratory enveloped him, revealing the fine contours of his face and the cool gleam of his eyes.

_Speak, Watson._

I should. A question had been asked; I ought to answer it. I considered the vial in my hand, placed it carefully back in its stand. The question had been about the experiment. I glanced at the notes again.

“Zoonoses,” I managed to say and took a fortifying breath. “A fascinating area.”

“Why is it fascinating?” the man asked. He had reached the corner of the lab table.

I turned towards him fully, had to tilt my head up to meet his eyes.

_Like the sea._

My brows drew together.

_What’s become of the rational approach?_

It’s an observation. From the cliffs outside Tangier, the sea looked like that. 

It had been a good holiday with a few mates from the medical corps who had no compelling reasons to dash back to Britain every time they had leave. We were more than halfway down the list of entertainments the resort had to offer, when a feral dog bit Murray and the two of us left early to get the necessary tests done. We had regretted missing the scuba diving. 

“Too often overlooked in diagnosis,” I said. I had not overlooked it. Murray had suffered no complications.

“True,” my host replied.

My gaze dropped to his mouth.

“A sometimes fatal oversight,” he continued. “The information is useful in forensics as well. It can provide a valuable clue to identity.”

His lips were full. I was mesmerised by their changing shape as he spoke, enunciating each word as though he were French kissing it.

_Concentrate, Watson._

“I haven’t usually been faced with identity problems when making my diagnoses,” I heard myself say and felt rather proud at having produced such a long and relevant sentence in such a calm, professional voice.

“They don’t waste surgeon’s time on the dead,” he said, “but in a morgue it can be a factor.” His lips curved upwards slightly on the final words.

I looked back at his eyes. The smile had changed their shape.

“Are you a pathologist?” I asked. All those years of multitasking under stressful conditions were paying off.

“Not a bad deduction,” he said. “Incorrect, but not illogical.” 

He turned towards the study, his coat flaring about him. “Let us sit while you deduce, Doctor Watson. I have the advantage as I already know the basics about you and it’s probably too soon to go deeper.” He glanced back at me when he reached the hearth and gestured towards the seat facing the one by which he was standing. He shrugged off his coat and scarf and draped them over the closest desk chair.

His motions were beautiful to watch. There was training there. A martial art? I thought I recognised the kind of assurance that comes with deadly knowledge.

“Tea,” Mrs Hudson announced, entering the study with a large tray. “It wouldn’t have taken so long, but Baskerville was begging for treats.” She set the tray on a table between the two nearest windows. “How do you take your tea, Doctor Watson?”

“Milk, please, no sugar,” I replied, pulling the lab door back into the position in which I had found it.

I turned and paused, cocking my head towards the hallway. A scrabbling sound on the stairs was growing rapidly louder. I strode towards the door just as an enormous animal bounded into the room. I barred the beast’s way, legs apart and arms raised in front of my chest. I could not say what the creature was, but it was a mammal and I knew where to strike it a blow that would stun it. The brute snarled, deep and long, showing me fine fangs and shifted right in an attempt to circumvent me. I shifted with him.

“Sit, Baskerville,” my host said.

The animal obeyed immediately, its eyes rolling up to look at its master. It whined.

I moved back a pace, realising the creature belonged to the house, although its name conjured ominous associations from my army days.

“You must get to know Doctor Watson,” my host said soothingly, stepping past me to the animal’s side.

I watched his pale fingers disappear into long, black fur as he scratched behind the beast’s ears. Now that it was at rest, I could see that it was a huge dog, possibly a mastiff, but with a mane of thick hair and unsettling red eyes.

The dog quieted beneath its master’s touch, pressing against his leg, its head raised, mouth open, tongue lolling. It looked more like a small bear than a dog and I thought of other stories, this time of the highly classified activities that were rumoured to occur at the military base at Baskerville, and I wondered whether my host’s placating tone had been for the beast or for me.

He lifted an arm. Without warning, I felt his hand curled around my neck, a couple fingers slipping beneath my collar.

For the second time that evening, my eyes opened wide.

The hand was withdrawn.

I felt its imprint on my skin.

The hand was offered to the dog. The nails of its hind legs clicked against the floorboards as it snuffled loudly against the palm.

“Take a good sniff, Baskerville,” Mrs Hudson said, “Doctor Watson may be joining us.” She set a cup and saucer on the table by one of the arm chairs. “Have a seat, Doctor. Baskerville won’t bother you now he’s got Sherlock.”

I remained standing.

So this was Sherlock Holmes, author of monographs on esoteric topics and my potential employer. I had pictured him older. The publication dates of his articles went back nearly twenty years and covered such a wide range of subjects I had not been able to discern his specialism.

Mrs Hudson patted my arm. “Sit, dear,” she urged softly. “Baskerville’s a good boy. He just gets all excited when Sherlock comes home.” 

I went and sat, albeit with lingering misgivings. Seated, the dog was nearly as tall as I was. Mrs Hudson added a plate of small cakes to the tea on the side table by my chair. The dog eyed them, nose twitching, and I wondered if it…he…would lunge at the food.

Instead, when Mr Holmes sat, the dog followed calmly and rested his huge head on the arm of the chair. After a sip of the tea Mrs Hudson handed him, Mr Holmes set it aside and resumed stroking the dog’s head. Baskerville closed his eyes and thumped his tail against the carpet.

As large as Mrs Hudson had described the house as being, I thought it must be confining for such a big animal. To my chagrin, no sooner had I had the thought than I expressed it. 

_Imprudent, Watson._

“One of us take him for a run in the park every day,” Sherlock said and took a bite of a cake.

“Me, usually,” Mrs Hudson added as she headed out the door, “unless Billy’s about.”

“He must cause something of a sensation,” I remarked.

“We take him after dark,” Mr Holmes replied and wiped away a crumb that had lingered at the corner of his lips.

_Watching very closely, eh, Watson?_

“But the park’s locked at night,” I thought out loud.

I pressed my lips together and turned towards the hearth. I was moving further and further from recommended approaches to job interviews. The log I had added to the fire cracked, flames shooting up between the halves. It seemed fitting.

“I have keys,” Mr Holmes said and I heard the smile in his voice.

“Of course, you do,” I thought, and managed not to say it aloud. Legend had it that Holmeswood Manor had once sat on an estate that stretched northward all the way to the heath and east past the borders of what became the Regent’s Park. What its other boundaries were supposed to have been I had never heard precisely, but tunnels and underground rivers were involved.

“Would you like to see?” Mr Holmes asked.

I looked towards him and was grateful that I was not holding my tea cup. I was sure mind-readers did not exist, but his eyes were flickering over me as though he were absorbing the data on a computer screen. Among my gambling friends, my inscrutable poker face was renowned. I wondered whether I had lost that skill, too.

“See?” I repeated.

“You grew up locally. You’ve heard the stories,” he said.

I clearly had not been subtle in my gaping.

“Yes,” I admitted, since there was nothing for it but to own up. I searched my memory for traces of him in the tales, some charismatic seer or psychic.

_Those stories were old long before he was born. How could he be in them?_

I shook my head slightly. Whatever grains of truth might reside in the legends must be the echoes of some eccentric forebears.

“A lot of nonsense,” I said, but I thought he was one who could inspire tales of his own.

“They’ve made you hesitate,” he said, his eyes roving over me. “And you’re not a man deterred by nonsense.”

“That’s true,” I agreed, studying him in turn. He was a noble study, with his long legs crossed, one hand on the dog’s enormous head, the other resting on the arm of his chair - a commander at his ease.

_“…the lion in his den, the Douglas in his hall…”_

Poetry now, is it? I have no intention of offending him.

_Is it swearing fealty that you have in mind, then?_

Stop!

“If you will be staying, Doctor,” Mr Holmes said, “you’ll need a tour of the premises.”

For all my internal dialoguing, I was sure I had not missed him making me an offer of the job and yet he seemed to be saying it was mine for the taking.

The idea coursed through me like a current.

_Steady on, Watson._

My eyes darted about the room. Beyond the window, the moon rode high above the rooftops and I thought that if a neon sign suddenly appeared on one of them, blinking alternately ‘run’ and ‘now’, it would not persuade me to abandon this chance. Remaining steady in the face of that realisation would not be easy.

 _The semblance of steadiness at least then, Watson. Maybe you have aces, maybe you have spots before your eyes._

It was a fair point. I could take a moment to place my bet.

I picked up my tea and took a sip, let it sit on my tongue before I swallowed. I took a deep breath and savoured the scent of spice cake and charred wood, old leather and a faint hint of dog. I exhaled and leaned back in the well-cushioned chair as the last traces of damp and chill that had beset me in the street were burnt away by the fire.

I tipped my head back. There was a night sky painted on the ceiling. Several bird skeletons were suspended from it, wired in perpetual flight, their bones catching the light. It had been years since I had dreamt of flying. 

I considered the career I had had. The thousands of lives that had been placed in my hands. Would having only a few to care for be enough for me?

I thought about the enigmatic man in the room, with his laboratory, his abstruse monographs and his loyal hellhound. I tried not to think of his long, graceful fingers. Perhaps just one life could be enough.

The sound of a knot popping in the hearth was followed by a hiss of steam.

_Ask about terms, Watson._

I lowered my eyes, looked across the space between our chairs, and found Mr Holmes swiping through screens on his mobile with rapid flicks of his thumb.

I cleared my throat to make my announcement and stalled. Without an introduction, I was unsure how I should address him, what honorific he might prefer.

“May I borrow your phone?” he interjected and held out his hand.

My mobile was out of my pocket and I was leaning forward offering it to him before I gave the superfluity of his request a conscious thought.

He closed his fingers about it without even the tip of one of them touching my hand. 

Mine curled over my empty palm.

He set my phone on the arm of his chair, which I found oddly disappointing, and proceeded to tap away at them both.

I watched the nimble movement of his fingers, glanced at the neutral expression on his face and thought it would be a losing proposition to play poker with him. 

_That’s unlikely to be part of the job description._

Just as well.

“There,” he said, handing my mobile back. “I have your number and you have mine. I prefer to text and do so at all hours. Sometimes I don’t speak a word for days. A month’s wages have been transferred to your current account. If, at any time during the coming month, you decide you do not wish to live here as our resident physician and my personal assistant, an amount equal to the balance of a month’s salary will be wired to your account and we will part ways.”

_He just accessed your bank account._

Don’t care. 

There wasn’t much in it. He couldn’t have made a huge withdrawal or even a moderate one. The scarcity of my funds should have made each pound more precious, I suppose, but where suspicion should have been, there was a pleasing sensation, as though he had touched me after all.

_Do you care how he did it?_

Not really. 

Considering the number of scandals in the press, hacking must have become a common skill since I’d been away. I looked at his hands again. His fingers were interlaced and I thought he might be keeping them in check, motion seemed to be their natural state from the little I had seen. Images of them pulling coins out of the air or plucking scarves from people’s pockets in spills of cards and keys, guns and knives flashed through my mind.

Free association is an interesting thing, but I pushed it aside and focussed on medical considerations. Having only met him and Mrs Hudson, I did not think health care would take up much of my time, although either of them might be suffering from conditions that were not obvious and there were the signs of osteoarthritis I had already noted in Mrs Hudson’s hand. I would need to review their medical histories and run some tests of my own, but filling the time when I wasn’t needed as a physician by assisting Mr Holmes with research or experimentation had a strong appeal.

He had turned his gaze towards the fire. 

I flexed the fingers of my left hand.

_Keen to show off your skills?_

Yes.

But how much of them remain to me? I balled my hand into a fist. 

“What if I don’t discharge my duties to the standard you require?” I asked. 

“You are competent and conscientious. I am sure you will perform your duties in a satisfactory manner,” he replied, his eyes returning to me.

I felt warm.

“Possibly even to an exemplary standard,” he added.

It was like a drop of nectar. Just a drop, not too sweet. I could almost taste it on my tongue. How I missed the satisfaction of a job well done. I lifted my chin.

“You couldn’t know that from a few minutes’ conversation,” I countered.

“I could. I observe more than most people,” he said, untwining his fingers and pressing their tips together in front of his lips. “I have enough information to make my decision.” 

_“Why are you arguing against your own case, Watson? Your resumé is solid. Mike would have sung your praises._

I want to earn his good opinion.

_Peacock hasn’t had a chance to spread his tail, eh?_

He raised an eyebrow at me. “Ask yourself why you were ready to defend me against what you perceived to be the attack of a ferocious animal?”

I inhaled slowly.

He was settled deep in his chair, the prayerful position of his hands leading my eyes to his mouth. It did not require any assistance to garner admiration. I lowered my eyes. His shirt was nearly as dark as his suit and tight across his chest, the edges of the buttons ruddy in the glow of the flames. Everything below merged with the shadows. My gaze snapped higher. Moonlight formed a nimbus around his curls. He was the embodiment of mystery, bait and trap all in one.

I pressed my lips together. Those thoughts needed to stay in my head.

_You protect what’s yours._

He isn’t mine...

“…yet,” I finished aloud. I bit the inside of my lip.

_So you need to stay until he is. You've given it some calm thought, now don’t let this one slip away. Tell him you’re staying._

He parted his lips as though to speak.

“I’m staying,” I said. I doubted anything he was going to tell me would deter me: reanimated corpses in the attic, vampires in the basement, werewolves in the back garden, if there was one, a back garden, that is. I’d defend them, too, or treat them for the flu, if that was what he required. I looked up then and he smiled at me.

He stood. “I’ll give you a quick tour, so you can find your way to your room and back here safely.”

I sprang up as well, feeling light and probably looking a bit puzzled.

“It’s an old house; it has…quirks,” he said, “and I wouldn’t want to lose you.”

Maybe he was testing the strength of my decision or aiming for a spot of humour. I could only focus on how little space there was for the two of us to stand between the armchairs, his height all the more pronounced because of how near we were to one another. My eyes fixed on the fair skin visible at his throat where his collar was undone. I could see the pulse at his throat and repressed a smile. My proximity was perhaps having some effect on him. I wanted to count the beats with my fingertips; see if I could make them speed up more.

I inhaled, which was a mistake at that distance. A light fragrance emanated from his open collar, something that made me want to lick the skin over that delicate throb, to taste it or even bite into it.

The air cooled. He had stepped away.

“Shall we?” he said and gestured towards the far wall of the library. 

I felt that we should do many things.

He flitted across the moonbeams streaming through the windows. When I finally set myself in motion, he had stopped in the last pool of silvery light and was regarding me. There were no flames to colour him there; he was all pallor and darkness.

The room seemed inordinately long as I progressed through it, skirting the benches and pedestals and display cases that seemed to sprout in my path. I thought the shadows about him grew denser as I hastened forward and a fear that he might be swallowed by them before I reached his side gripped me.

He waited, as still and pale as the statues I had passed, except, as I drew near, I could see the pink bloom of his mouth.

An urge to taste it rose in me. I clenched my fists by my side. I was not going to get myself dismissed from the job before I had even started it. 

Eyes still upon me, he reached behind him and pulled a slender volume down onto its spine. A bookcase swung open and he took a step backwards into the dark. 

****

**~~~~~~oo0oo~~~~~~**


	2. Sequestration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John learns that one of the terms of employment is that he must remain at the Manor, unless accompanying Sherlock elsewhere, for the entire month of his probation. He doesn't think that's all that different from being in the Army.
> 
>  **Excerpt:** “I can come back in the morning,” I called.
> 
> “No!” He shouted, striding back through the door. He took a deep breath when he stood before me again and regarded me from beneath lowered brows. “We have begun,” he said quietly.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Peering into the dark, I saw no movement, heard no footfall. The air was cooler though and there was a whiff of damp.

I rested my left hand on the exposed side of the book shelves and slid it along the wood, over a strip of moulding past which the ambient light of the library did not follow. I could feel more wood, more panelling if the regular indentations were anything to go by, but not see the hand with which I explored. I glanced over my shoulder. Bands of moonlight frosted the library’s carpets and furniture, the hearth glowed ruddily in the distance. I turned back to the doorway. If I did not have tactile evidence to the contrary, I would assert that a curtain hung over the opening. I took a step forward and then another, testing the floor with the toe of my shoe before I put my weight down. Nothing brushed against my face neither did the floor give way. I kept my fingertips gliding along the left wall. To my right, there was a draught. I leaned closer to the left.

There was a click, the slightest creak of a hinge, and faint light filled a doorway ahead of me. The gloom about me lessened. My eyes darted in all directions, hungry for the information they had been denied.

The passage between the two rooms was longer than I would have expected. The streetward side was panelled in wood that matched the library shelves and the wall opposite held a narrow door which was ajar. Through it, I glimpsed a corridor running perpendicular to the passage, between the library and the next room. What I could see of its wall was timber and brickwork, the former forked and blackened, the latter thin and yellow.

“The house has evolved over the centuries,” Mr Holmes said.

I turned my gaze in the direction of his voice, not even attempting to disguise my curiosity.

Mr Holmes leaned against the side of the doorway, the lighted corner of his mouth twitching upwards. “In turbulent times, secret rooms and passageways have their uses,” he said, “although some were simply for the servants.” He shrugged and slipped from view.

I did not dawdle. The notion of getting lost was appearing less than fanciful.

The room I entered was smaller than the library and illuminated by the lights that shone through four tall stained glass windows. I felt sure there must be brighter lighting available in the room and that these had been lit first to enhance their effect. I stood and admired them unabashedly. If Mr Holmes was showing off his house to me, I was not going to hide my appreciation.

_You probably couldn’t anyway._

Probably not.

The colours in the window before me were mostly shades of blue and violet and grey. Beneath a stormy sky, a naked youth sat on a rocky outcropping overlooking a lake. He cradled a lute in his lap. The glass of his skin was opalescent, that of his wind-tossed curls a nearly-opaque black. Ravens’ wings sprouted from his sandals, a winged cap rested near to hand. He was half turned away as though searching the water behind him for something or perhaps waiting for an answering song.

I felt a blush creeping over me. Mr Holmes could have been the model for the figure in the window, although the style suggested its creation dated from a century or more before his birth. Examining it made me feel a voyeur; it was an exceptional piece of art, but I knew my interest was held by the strength of the resemblance.

_Wish the lute wasn’t there?_

Behave.

I turned aside for modesty’s sake and found the next window nearly as unsettling. Its nude played pipes in a glade, his furry legs and hooves tucked against the fallen tree trunk upon which he sat. Above and behind him brilliant flowers and fruit teemed amidst shadowy foliage, while the piper was awash in sunshine, his tawny hair and fur glittering with streaks of golden and silvery glass. The set of his shoulders, the tilt of his head were images I have often seen in my mirror. 

Hesitantly, I glanced at the other two windows. In each, a woman danced among meadow flowers, purple mountains in the background, a chord of fiery sun between their slopes staining the blue sky above with bands of orange and lavender. One held a beribboned tambourine aloft, her light brown hair falling in waves past her waist. The other held castanets in her open fingers, her long, dark hair swirling out about her, a scarlet cloak by her feet. I was relieved to see that neither resembled anyone I knew.

_Yet._

Quiet.

My guess was that I was in a music room.

A floor lamp like a harvest moon lit up and the function of the room was confirmed. Sherlock was turned away from me searching in one of the many glass-fronted cupboards that stood between the windows. On their shelves, more instruments sat, their metal and wood gleaming.

I took a few steps further into the room. I could almost hear the music waiting to be played. I pivoted slowly, cataloguing details. I was not assessing or doing anything practical like seeing if I could identify the panel through which we had gained access to the room. It had closed without my noticing it, as camouflaged now as it had been in the library, as if leaving was not an option. 

_There it is._

I paused in my turning, thought I saw the place, but not what one must touch to open it, some shadow no doubt obscuring it. There were wooden columns carved into the semblance of various young trees framing each panel of the wall. Some braced cushioned benches between them. Perhaps the door’s lever was hidden beneath a cushion or in the grain of a tree trunk.

_Or higher where the branches begin?_

I followed their grain upwards to where branches spread out onto the ceiling. I guessed that the green and gilt leaves that sprouted from the wooden arches were painted plasterwork. Between them, the ceiling was a patchwork of blue glass lit from above. 

My eye roved as I continued to turn, lowering my gaze slightly when my neck complained of the angle. There was a minstrels’ gallery along the wall facing the dancers’ windows. The columns supporting it were mature trees, whose girth I could not have encompassed in my outstretched arms. The gallery’s railing was carved with leaves and flowers, something at their centres catching the coloured light. There was no visible access to the gallery; my assumption was that it was concealed in one of the tree trunks. I took a firm step towards the right one, the impulse to uncover the hidden staircase strong. Perhaps the whole house was to be a series of puzzle boxes. 

My footfall echoed loudly on the parquet floor. Bloody dress shoes.

I glanced behind me. Mr Holmes was crouched now on the opposite side of the room, sliding shallow drawers in and out.

Closer inspection of the gallery’s supports left me no wiser and the diminished light underneath it was hindering my investigation. I resorted to touch again, sensitive fingers being an important diagnostic tool. I ran my hands over the contours of the tree and felt a spot smoother than the rest of the surface. I pressed and smiled when I heard the snick of a latch. The door popped open a centimetre or two. I eased it the rest of the way open and huffed in disappointment at the folded music stands and chairs I found inside.

I darted to the other side, hands ready to explore. This time it was a knot that depressed when my forefinger slid over it. I stared into the cavity revealed, stretched my hand into the darkness. Cool metal met it. I felt cautiously with my foot and found the first step.

I had to turn sideways to slip out of the narrow doorway ajar at the top. I was thinking that no large instrument could be brought up those stairs, when I saw a harp glittering from the shadows of the opposite corner of the gallery.

“They must have put you up here when this was built,” I murmured, moving towards it. I touched my palm lightly to the strings and ran my eyes over the gilt wood. “What a beauty, you are,” I whispered and plucked a string.

“Do you play?” Sherlock asked.

I looked down, thinking he was just below the gallery. He was still at the other end of the room. The acoustics were impressive.

“Not really,” I said. “I used to listen to a neighbour when I was doing schoolwork. One day she was in her garden and I told her how beautiful I found the music and asked if she could teach me. I’d only had a few lessons when we moved away.”

“Inborn charm,” he said as though classifying a specimen, “always the most effective. After that?”

I was not sure his pronouncement was a compliment, but my capillaries seemed to think it was. “The clarinet at school,” I answered, “and a bit of noodling on my own on a tin whistle someone gave me.”

Sherlock crossed the floor, lifted a cushion on a bench near where we had entered the room.

“What about this?” he asked, holding up a small harp.

“Sorry, my beauty,” I whispered and clattered down the stairs. What Mr Holmes held in his hands was like something from a story...or a song.

_The minstrel boy to the war has gone…_

“Ah,” I said as I took the harp in my arms. Its shoulder fit against mine. I plucked a string, the rest of the lyrics following fast upon the sound. I searched for a higher note, then another. I let the echoes fade away before I plucked a fourth. I winced and pressed my hand lightly against the strings.

Mr Holmes dangled a tuning key on a length of black ribbon before me.

I closed my hand around it and heard my neighbour’s voice - turn it gently, the tiniest bit at a time.

I fitted the key around the errant string’s peg and applied the slightest pressure, tried the string again and smiled. I tried the next string, my fingers careful, my head cocked. I plucked the first bar of the song again. I was humming, but I couldn’t find the right strings fast enough. And then the music began.

I had not seen him take the violin up, didn’t know if it had been in a case or lying out somewhere, but now it was against his shoulder and he swayed with the song he called forth from it, the song I had been humming. I sat on the bench, embracing the harp in my lap and closed my eyes to listen. Images rose before my mind’s eye, landscapes traversed by soldiers in uniforms unknown mixed with flashes of faces from my own past. I started to sing softly.

“The minstrel boy to the war has gone,  
“In the ranks of death you will find him.  
“His father’s sword he has girded on and his wild harp slung behind him.  
“‘Land of Song!’” said the warrior bard,  
“‘Tho’ all the world betrays thee,  
“One sword, at least, thy rights shall guard,  
“One faithful harp shall praise thee.”

I took a deep breath and hesitated to continue, less sure of the second verse. The violin wove the melody into another shape; mist rolled over green hills, sandstorms scoured rocky crags. The familiar tune returned and the words came to me.

“The Minstrel fell, but the foeman’s chains could not bring his proud soul under.  
“The harp he loved ne’er spoke again, for he tore its chords asunder.  
“And said, ‘No chains shall sully thee, thy soul of love and bravery.  
“‘Thy songs were made for the pure and free,  
“‘They shall never sound in slavery.’”

I halted then and listened to Mr Holmes improvise.

It is not a cheery song and yet the words had appealed to me the first time I heard them sung as a boy. I had found the poem in the library and committed it to heart. I think I amended my plan to be a doctor to being an army doctor then. I had healed my comrades instead of singing to them, except when I was very drunk or sometimes in the shower, until the army had sent me away, my chords torn asunder.

The music ceased.

I opened my eyes. He was putting his violin away.

“Shall we continue our tour?” he asked.

I stood, balancing the harp on my hip and lifted the top of the bench to put it away.

“Take it with you,” he said. “I usually keep my violin nearby. If you’re going to play, you should have it to hand.”

Was I going to play?

I looked at the harp. The dark wood of the sound box was inlaid with stylised knots in lighter wood, the pillar carved with more complicated snarls, a few of which ended in open-mouthed snakes. The designs were highlighted with gilt, except for the snakes’ mouths and tongues, which were enamelled in red.

I did not argue about taking it along.

“We can have its cover fitted with a strap so that you can carry it slung behind you,” he said.

There was no hint of humour in his words. He looked pensive.

It is a sad song.

He picked up his violin case. “How do you think we can get to the next room?” he asked in an almost playful tone, but the look in his eye remained thoughtful.

*** 

We were stood on another minstrels’ gallery, having stepped through a panel in the middle of the gallery in the music room.

This route had not been my solution. I had suggested we follow the corridor west that I had seen between the walls of the library and the music room. I was pretty confident that I had spied the way to re-open the door to the library and it seemed logical that there would be doors to other rooms along the brick-walled hallway I had glimpsed. My answer had gained an approving nod and Mr Holmes had confirmed that it would have worked.

His approach would not be an easy one for me to use alone as Mr Holmes had had to stretch onto his toes to press a brass point at the tip of the longest sunbeam carved into a scene of a sun setting behind wooded hills. His route would provide a more scenic view, he had said.

I was not able to see much beyond the railing of the balcony, but I could sense the size of the room from the way it swallowed the sounds of our entry.

Even that limited view vanished when Mr Holmes shut the panel that had swivelled to allow us to enter. The darkness was silent and my eyes and ears were adjusting to both when the room exploded into light and there was a loud noise of astonishment which had come from me.

I drew in a sharp breath at the size of the space and the dazzle of rainbow prisms bouncing back and forth between the mirrors that stood in place of windowpanes along both sides of the room. I would not be surprised to learn that the vast hall went all the way to the parallel road as there were four windows on the distant opposite wall, if the closed curtains were not disguising something other than windows.

“Interested in fencing?” he asked.

“Never learned,” I replied, quelling the urge to mention that I could throw a knife very accurately.

_Why resist?_

It’s not what he asked.

I looked about the room. There were long, cushioned seats running the length of the outer wall. I wondered if they contained equipment as the bench in the music room had concealed the harp.

“Interested in learning?”

Who was his usual fencing partner? A dim form appeared in my mind’s eye and it displeased me.

_You should be encouraging regular exercise, Doctor._

Letting him instruct me would be good exercise. I pictured us fencing in this splendid, spacious room. It was a much more satisfactory image.

_But you couldn’t attempt it with your leg, Watson._

My shoulders slumped. I reached for my cane. It was not to hand and I realised that I did not know where it was. I grabbed the railing instead.

“You left it in the laboratory,” Mr Holmes said. “You don’t need it. The limp is psychosomatic, as your therapist has told you. About this, she is right.”

That certainly had not been on my resumé, but if he could access my bank account, why not my medical history?

“How did you get my medical records?” I asked, my voice level and low.

_Where’s your outrage?_

I gazed out over the hall. Misplaced it as well.

“I didn’t need to,” Mr Holmes replied.

“Then how could you know?”

“I observed. While we spoke and toured, you forgot about your leg injury, despite the walking and stair climbing we have been doing. If you can forget it when your attention is elsewhere, it’s not a physical injury.”

I glanced towards him, my grip on the bannister lessening.

I saw that he observed that, too.

I lifted my hand from the railing. No pain shot up my spine. I did not fall.

I stared at this man I had known for an hour. He had not said I was uninjured; he’d said the injury was not physical. That is pretty much the definition of a psychosomatic condition, which is what my therapist had been telling me for weeks and it had not made a bit of difference. She did not see me. He did.

I almost asked whether he was a psychiatrist, but his engagement was too intense, as though he were reading my mind.

_That doesn’t exist._

Hypnotists, mesmerists had figured in the stories.

 _Nearly everything has._

I exhaled and turned back to the hall. I still was not sure I could attempt to fence with him, but I could join this mind game of his.

I scanned the ceiling where griffins and dragons and winged horses swooped and soared between gold-tinted clouds then dropped my eyes to the walls. Unlit crystal sconces in oval plaster wreaths filled the spaces between the windows on the north and south walls; dropping my eyes lower I took note of the plain wooden bar that ran along the north wall in front of the mirrored windows, ending with the flooring which clearly wasn’t original either and looked as though it might be cushioned. There was a long stick leaning against one of the benches. Other than it, I saw no equipment of any kind. Martial arts came to mind again as well as dance, perhaps gymnastics, and then there was the fencing…

“Biophysicist?” I asked, returning my gaze to my host.

“An interesting deduction,” he replied, tapping his lower lip, “but no. I find singlestick, baritsu, fencing and dance all have their uses. The last not as frequently as I would like. The old ballroom was easy enough to adapt once my parents started spending most of their time abroad and it was no longer required for its original purpose.”

I focussed once more on the hall. It seemed my diagnostic skills were being tested to see how broadly I could apply them.

_What else is here for you to see, Watson? What could it tell you about him?_

I leaned forward, squinting against the sparkle of the chandeliers.

At the end of the room, a target was positioned between the curtained windows. It was too large for darts. There were no pockmarks in the adjacent walls that I could see and the curtains did not appear torn. Either Sherlock was an excellent archer or archery was not practiced here at all. I was still judging the distance from where we stood when Sherlock eased the harp away from my grasp and placed an unstrung bow in my hand.

I looked down at it. Back to the mind-reading, apparently.

From whence he had plucked it I did not know, but it was a beautiful long curve of wood that felt good in my grip. It took the strength of both my hands to slip the knot into the nock. My shoulder ached in protest at the effort. I ignored it.

He set the harp in a corner. When he stood again, he held out an arrow, source likewise unknown.

I accepted it.

He narrowed his eyes at my hand. “You prefer a gun, but you are not unfamiliar with a bow.

I pinched the arrow between my thumb and forefinger and flexed my other fingers. I understood muscles and their functions. What in my hand could have told him that?

“There is a practice range for firearms in the sub-basement. Soundproofed, of course. It’s best not to alarm the neighbours unnecessarily, although I do occasionally,” he said.

I would show him what John Watson could do with a firearm when we made our way there.

In the meantime, I tested the tension of the string and finding it satisfactory nocked the arrow. My shoulder complained again, but I held steady and let the arrow fly.

It hit just outside the inner ten ring.

Mr Holmes held out another arrow.

It hit slightly inside the inner ten ring.

He shifted closer and handed me a third.

An instant later, it quivered at the heart of the innermost ring.

“Could you do that again?” he asked and a fourth arrow appeared in his hand.

That faint fragrance was wafting off him again. I took a deep breath of it and sighted along the arrow. I had taken the measure of the bow and the hall. It was too soon to make other judgements. I released the string.

The wood of the third arrow parted with a sharp crack.

I smiled.

Sherlock plunged down the stairs and strode down the length of the room.

I watched him study the target.

I unstrung the bow, balanced it across a stool, collected the harp and followed.

“You’re even better with a gun,” he remarked when I reached him.

“What makes you say that?” I asked.

“The way you held the bow. It’s been a while since you’ve used one.” He reached for my left hand, held it palm up by the wrist and traced a fingertip along my trigger finger. “The callouses are fading, but you practiced regularly for years.” He paused. “Not always firing. Just holding and sighting. Hm.” He let go.

“Ammunition is expensive,” I said.

“You make each shot count,” he replied. “And you still have the gun.”

I neither confirmed nor denied, my expression studiously neutral.

“We have many secrets here,” he said. “That can be one more. I’ll order ammunition for a SIG-Sauer P226R.”

I may have let the merest hint of a smile escape me. The benefits of the job were mounting.

“And since you no longer require your cane, we can begin fencing lessons tomorrow.”

I pictured him in fencing gear and nodded.

The little, argumentative voice inside my head snorted.

“Good,” he said and led me out another door.

It went on like that for another quarter of an hour. He passed the entrances to a few formal reception rooms and a huge dining room with a wave. “My parents use those occasionally when they’re in London, which is mercifully rare.” And then we were in a courtyard.

_Does this qualify as a back garden?_

Not sure.

_Any werewolves about?_

Haven’t had a chance to look yet.

It was arranged formally with pebbled paths edged with glass bricks between the flower beds that converged on a fountain whose central column spouted a gentle fall of water over its stone garlands. There was a smell of herbs in the air. The high walls must provide shelter from the cold and the wind, because only the rose bushes, a vine running up the wall and a few small trees in the corners were leafless. The moon was directly above us by then and it silvered the foliage of the sturdier plants and shrubs. I ran my hand along the top of one and it came away smelling of rosemary. There were other aromatic plants obscured by the dark whose scents I could not separate from the heady whole.

“Kitchen herbs there, botanical poisons there,” Sherlock said, gesturing to the left and right.

“Ah,” was all I could think to say. It would give meal times an extra dimension.

“The more delicate specimens are in the conservatories and some of the frost-hardy ones that need more sun are up in the roof gardens,” he added.

I nodded and gazed upwards, saw the shadowy outline of vines hanging from the roof. I was running out of new adjectives to express my surprise and amazement. It was going to take me weeks to learn basic navigation of the house’s eccentricities, which I suspected had been designed with an intent to thwart interlopers.

“Woohoo, Sherlock.” Mrs Hudson appeared on the other side of the garden. “I’m glad I found you. Detective Inspector Lestrade said you weren’t answering your phone, so he came over. He’s in the foyer. He wouldn’t even go up to the study to sit, he’s so anxious to speak with you.”

“Bring Lestrade out…” Sherlock began. “No, never mind, I’ll go to him. Can you show Doctor Watson his rooms, we haven’t made it up there.” He waved a hand at one of the walls of the courtyard. "And leave this in the study." He handed her his violin case.

“Oh, no worries. Doctor Watson, I can take you out this way,” she said, taking the case and pointing with it into the gloom.

“John, please,” I said.

“I’m so happy you’ll be staying...John. I knew Doctor Stamford would have a good recommendation for us. I could feel it in my bones.” She smiled and looked around the garden. “You know, we do have lights we could turn on out here. They’re rather pretty…”

“We’ll have to postpone the grand tour until tomorrow, just his rooms will do for tonight,” Sherlock interrupted from the doorway. “John, I may have to go off with Lestrade to see whatever crime has stymied the combined intellect of New Scotland Yard this time. Hopefully, whatever it is will be worth the interruption and won’t take too long.”

He motioned towards the upper floors. “Mrs Hudson, the rooms are prepared?”

“I got them sorted this afternoon,” she said. “The Detective Inspector seems awfully anxious, Sherlock.”

“Yes, yes, I’m going,” he replied and stepped through the door Mrs Hudson had left open. 

“I can come back in the morning,” I called.

“No!” He shouted, striding back through the door. He took a deep breath when he stood before me again and regarded me from beneath lowered brows. “We have begun,” he said quietly.

I had the oddest impression that I could see the dial of a clock reflected in one of his eyes, the one that was not completely hidden by the shadows. I glanced about the courtyard; I could not see a clock embedded in its walls.

He turned from me and made a rapid circuit of the fountain, gesturing to himself.

“You should sleep here. There are important details we have not discussed,” he said on the first turn.

We had barely discussed any.

“If I’m not too long, we can go over some of them later this evening, if I am, we can begin at breakfast tomorrow. You must be here.” 

I loathed my bedsit and was enthralled by the Manor, the sooner I could transfer from the one to the other, the better, although I could certainly wait another day.

_It’s not the house that has enthralled you._

I shall not deny it.

I watched him circle the fountain, feeling uneasy each time he was out of sight on the other side of it.

_If he had asked you to wait for his return in his bed, you would probably have asked with or without pyjamas._

My temperature shot up and I stared at my feet. Given a choice, I would have preferred the latter.

This was not a good frame of mind. Some time alone to gather my wits was probably a good idea.

“Actually, this is a brilliant opportunity,” he said and hopped across the corner of a flowerbed.

“It is?” I asked.

“Lestrade consults me on a fairly regular basis. It’s best for you to meet him immediately and see what my work with him entails,” he continued.

He grabbed my sleeve. “Come, Doctor Watson,” he said.

“Well, I…”

“Why don’t I put that up in your room for you, Doctor…John?” Mrs Hudson said and tapped my other arm.

Sherlock glanced at her and nodded.

“All right,” I said to both of them.

Mrs Hudson took the harp away with a smile. Mr Holmes rushed towards the house and I followed.

*** 

I was slumped in the corner of a cab, my eyes closed, my limbs incredibly glad to be at rest and the muscles of my face stretched into a grin that did not feel as though it would abate any time soon.

“So this is what you do?” I asked, without opening my eyes.

“It’s part of I do. It’s not always so athletic; there’s usually more lab work,” he replied.

“The pig blood and so on,” I said.

“Exactly,” Sherlock said.

Sometime during the preceding few hours I had surmounted my difficulty with calling him that. It had probably been the roof jumping that did it, although it may have been when I got the suspect we were pursuing in a choke hold and pinched a nerve in his arm before he could aim his gun at my new employer.

_You were tempted to paralyse him._

If he hadn’t dropped the gun at the first wave of pain, I would have.

_A bit not good._

He was more than a bit not good.

“For the best my limp got sorted out earlier. Who knows where I might have left my cane with all of that going on,” I said and chuckled. I had reached that stage of fatigue.

“Just here,” Sherlock said. “Wait for us.”

“Right-o,” the cabbie replied.

“Where are we?” I asked and opened my eyes. “Oh.”

The façade of the building wasn’t any more inspiring than the tiny section of it that was my bedsit. I had forgotten about coming back here. In my mind, I was already a resident of Baker Street.

I sat up. Sherlock must have changed his mind. It made sense, we were in this part of town and it was very late. I might as well sleep here.

“Come on, John. It won’t take long with the two of us,” he said and was off.

The house door was open when I made it up the walkway. I could hear Sherlock’s steps on the stairs. It sounded like he was taking them two at a time. I closed the door and trudged up. I wasn’t sure what he was talking about.

The door to my bedsit was open when I caught up. I shut it and felt in my pocket for my keys. They were not there.

_You imagined him doing that earlier._

I had.

Sherlock held them up and jingled them. He was in the middle of my dreary, little room turning slowly. He grabbed my laptop from the side of the desk and tossed it on the bed. “You handle that,” he said and dropped my keys next to it.

He stepped to the wardrobe, pulled the two cases down from on top of it and flung its doors open.

“Wait,” I said. “I can just grab what I need for tonight. Get the rest tomorrow.” The tightness in my chest eased when I realised he was not suggesting I stay behind.

“Why? We’re here now. This way you don’t ever have to come back. You can post them the keys or I can send Wiggins with them.”

I didn’t know who Wiggins was. It was very late and I was very tired, but the idea that Sherlock might slip down the stairs and into the taxi if I talked about deposits and check-out lists set me to emptying the nightstand and desk drawers. I didn’t want to spend an extra minute in the place.

*** 

There was a lanky fellow leaning against the fence in front of 221B. Sherlock handed him some notes and told him to pay the cabbie when everything was unloaded and breezed inside.

I paused on the front step, hand resting on my computer bag, gun tucked in my waistband, holding a slightly damp carrier bag of toiletries and watched Wiggins slide the suitcases out of the back of the taxi. “There’re boxes of books in the boot,” I called. “I could give you a hand.”

He waved me away. “Best not keep him waiting,” he said and followed the taxi driver round to the boot.

*** 

I stood at the bottom of the stairs, not sure which way to go. I sagged against the newel post. 

“John.”

Library it was then.

Sherlock met me on the landing. He had shed his coat and scarf and behind him firelit shadows played.

“Mrs Hudson has left us a cold supper,” he said, motioning towards the doorway. He looked me up and down and took the carrier bag. “One more flight up.”

He was halfway up the stairs when I registered that he had moved. The fatigue I had felt before my flash removal was reasserting itself. I wondered whether I could make it up another flight.

“John.”

Clearly, I could.

He stood near the end of the hall, where three doors met. “This way,” he urged and disappeared into the right-hand room.

It made me want to hurry out of the empty hall.

He was in another doorway. I heard the clatter of the bag being deposited somewhere.

“WC,” he said and stood before me again.

My fatigue was obviously becoming extreme, although hunger may have been contributing to it.

He lifted the computer bag from my shoulder. It was a welcome relief. I didn’t notice where he set it, but he was in motion again. Metal slid along metal; heavy curtains parted. Pale light illuminated the lacy patterns over the glass doors that were revealed.

The cool air was bracing. Sherlock stepped out onto the balcony and I followed.

“Your room overlooking the courtyard,” he said with a sweeping gesture of an arm. 

I leaned against the railing and looked up at him.

He was grinning.

I did not think I had been bold enough to express that wish aloud, but I could have been wrong.

I turned back to the garden. Mrs Hudson had been right about the lighting being pretty. Tiny gleams of blue and white and gold twinkled from underneath the foliage and about the fountain, which seemed larger from my new vantage. I leaned further over the edge and squinted. I did not recall the statues surrounding it, pairs of them it seemed, clinging to the central column which looked more like a tree to me now with the water gushing from somewhere amidst its branches and dripping down the backs of the statues.

I blinked. The lights on the wet surfaces lent the appearance of movement to the statues, the muscles of their backs and legs seeming to flex. I shivered. There was an empty space on the tree trunk facing my balcony. I wondered whether it had been one of those works of art interrupted by turbulent times.

“Come downstairs by the fire,” Sherlock said. “The air is chilly and you are hungry.”

And then he was gone.

I did not rush after him; my brain and my body were slowing down. I needed to last just a little longer.

I ducked into the WC and found the light switch. It boasted an old-fashioned toilet with the tank mounted on the wall. A basin faced it with a narrow window above it and my toiletries in it. I set them next to the stack of towels and sundry bottles on the narrow shelf that ran the length of the small room and rinsed my face in the icy water the tap provided. Gasping, I grabbed one of the towels and kept the water from dripping down my neck. My pinkened face appeared in the mirror over the shelf as I lowered the towel. Behind me, I could see my dressing gown hanging on a hook on the back of the door. I turned around and felt the cloth. It was definitely there.

I went back into the room. By the light from the water closet, I saw my slippers by the bed. I sat down, pushed off my shoes and slid my feet into the slippers. Assuredly, they were mine.

I turned the bedside lamp on and gave the room a quick inspection. The wardrobe was full of my clothing, my books and a couple photographs were on the bookshelf next to the desk, which had my computer on it, the computer bag slung over the corner of the desk chair. I checked the desk drawers. The papers and pens I had shoved into the computer bag were all arrayed neatly in the various drawers.

How had I not heard Wiggins while we were out on the balcony and how had he managed it so fast?

I must have been moving far slower than I realised. Food and sleep was what I needed, in fairly rapid succession.

*** 

The library was dim and warm and Sherlock was sat before the fire. “Come sit,” he said and gave me an appraising look from head to foot.

I sat in the chair facing him, distracted somewhat by the array of dishes on the low table between the chairs.

From a platter on his side of the table, Sherlock cut a generous portion of smoked salmon, spooned some capers over it and handed it on a small plate to me. “Help yourself,” he urged, pointing to the assortment of side dishes on the table with the point of the knife. 

“Everything in your room arranged to your satisfaction?” he asked.

I hummed my assent around the forkful of fish I had already put in my mouth. “How was Wiggins able to do it so quickly and quietly?” I managed to say after a minute.

Sherlock filled my wineglass from a tall green bottle with a hand-written label in an alphabet with which I was unfamiliar. He set the glass down near me. “He’s become efficient over the years. More salmon?”

A small bowl of beetroot, a little plate of cheese followed the salmon. I had been very hungry and did not decline anything I was offered and in this incremental way, I was more than sated. Between listening to anecdotes of other cases Sherlock had helped Lestrade solve, I sipped the wines slowly, the one from the round, blue bottle and the short amber one having followed the first. I lost track of the number of dishes I sampled along with the meaning of his words and savoured the timbre of his voice as he spoke. The combination of flavours had done something marvellous in my mouth and my brain seemed to shut down other avenues of information to accommodate the unusual abundance of gustatory sensation. 

When most of the plates were empty, I sighed. I wasn’t sure I would be able to rise from the chair, so warm and full had I become.

Sherlock held up a small glass bowl with a couple slices of fruit standing up at the rim. I almost shook my head.

“It rounds off the meal,” he said, continuing to hold it aloft when I did not reach for it. The firelight glittered in the deep cuts of the glass. Whatever was inside looked red.

I may have been run around London until I was nearly starved, but now I was certainly being fed. I considered how modest the size of the bowl was and decided I did have a little room left. I took the dish.

There were berries and pieces of fruit small enough that I could not tell what they were at a glance, so I sampled them, one by one. Pear, blood orange, white peach and pomegranate. Their juices mixed together like an elixir. I took sips of wine between bites of fruit and at the end I chased the last pomegranate seed around the bowl until I had caught it and swallowed it.

I sank back in the chair. “That was the most wonderful meal I have ever had,” I said. “Does Mrs Hudson do all of this?”

“Mrs Hudson is fond of baking. She has Mrs Turner to help with much of the cooking,” he replied.

I noted that there was another member of the household whose health might be part of my remit. 

“And upon occasion, I compose a menu,” he added.

“Like tonight?” I suggested. 

I was not sure why I thought he had orchestrated the meal we had consumed, something about the effect the combined flavours were having on me, perhaps.

“Like tonight,” he affirmed.

“Biochemist?” I guessed.

“You’re getting closer,” he said and looked to say more.

I held up a finger. “Don’t tell me yet. Another day or two and I’m sure to get it.”

He nodded. “There is one thing I should tell you though.”

The tone caused me to straighten up in my chair.

“It’s too late to go through all the details of your position tonight; we can do that tomorrow. However, you should know that there is one crucial prerequisite to a successful completion of the probationary period…” he said and paused.

I set my wine glass aside and hoped that he would name something I could in good conscience do, because I wanted very much to successfully complete that probation.

“And that is, unless you are accompanying me, you do not leave the Manor until the moon is full again.”

The phrasing of the stipulation was unusual, but the import of it was not one that was strange to me. In the military, I certainly had not been free to come and go as I pleased. At times, it had even been a convenient excuse, although there had been occasions when it had been a hardship. Nevertheless, I had worked around such limitations for years, a month should not be a problem for me and only a lunar month at that.

“And afterwards?” I asked.

“After that, you would have paid holidays, sick leave and so on as in any other job.”

I glanced about the room. “And I may use the library?” I asked.

He waved a hand at the room and nodded. “You are to make yourself at home. I only ask that you be mindful of my experiments if you choose to use the laboratory.”

“I agree to remain…” I almost had said ‘on base’. “…for an entire month and to be mindful of your experiments.”

_You can always job hunt online, if you aren’t sure this is working out._

I am going to do my damnedest to make this work out.

He raised his glass to me. I reached for mine and returned his salute. 

“To what has begun,” he said and drained his glass.

The light caught his eye over the rim of the crystal and I had the impression again of seeing the face of a clock in it.

I was extremely tired and probably somewhat intoxicated. I finished my wine and sought out my new bed a happy man.

~~~~~~oo0oo~~~~~~


	3. Transfusions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock’s life is endangered and John is ready to do whatever is necessary to save him.
> 
> Excerpt: A glint of white streaked across the sky, a fleck of fallen moonbeam.  
>  _Fanciful, Watson._  
>  I may have crossed into the land of poets and madmen; I should use their language.

  


~~~~~~o0o~~~~~~

I awoke refreshed to a room bathed in the pearly light of an overcast day. I rolled onto my back and stretched; my entire body seemed to feel content with itself. I glanced at my watch. The morning was nearly gone, but there had not been much left of the night when I finally went to bed.

Upon my return from the bath, the fragrance of tea greeted me. On my desk sat a tray, with a small pot, a little pitcher, a waiting cup and a plate of cinnamon toast lightly dusted with sugar.

_Ah, Watson. One could grow accustomed to this._

I could indeed, despite the indication that privacy was not to be expected.

_You’ve lived with that for long enough._

‘Tis true. I have.

I poured milk from the little pitcher, added the tea and sipped. 

“Heaven in a cup,” I murmured, took a bite of toast and closed my eyes in pleasure.

_Expanding your notions of heaven, Watson?_

“By the second,” I said, finishing the slice of toast and taking the tea with me to the wardrobe.

*** 

The library looked hollow by daylight. The hearth was cold, the shadows less substantial. Beyond the windows, the clouds were thinning, but not enough to show any blue.

_Or is it that he is not here?_

He does have presence, no doubt about that.

I had not been told where to report for work, but the library or the laboratory seemed the likeliest.

_Could you have found the other rooms?_

Maybe.

I resolved to go round to the places I had seen as soon as possible, to reinforce what I had learned. If someone was injured or taken ill, it would not do for me to lose time taking wrong turns en route. Perhaps in the evening, Sherlock would have time to finish the tour that Detective Inspector Lestrade’s business had interrupted.

The laboratory door was shut, but unlocked. Inside, equipment hummed under dim lights. I found the switch by the door and turned them up. There was a third rack of test tubes on the table.

“Doctor Watson,” Mrs Hudson called.

I poked my head round the door. “John, please,” I said.

“Ah, there you are,” she said, setting a tray of covered dishes on the table where she had set the tea tray down the evening before.

It seemed longer ago.

“John, come eat before you get started on whatever Sherlock’s left for you to do,” she said and held out an envelope. “He may forget to sleep and eat, but I’m not going to let you starve on my watch.”

A nutritional review seemed in order then, probably with Mrs Hudson. I took the envelope and sat at the table. “Thank you for the tea this morning. That was a lovely surprise,” I said as she uncovered dishes.

“You and Sherlock were out so late last night, I thought you’d need some tea straight away to get going,” she said, “and Billy was around to take it up as soon as I heard you turn the shower off.”

I must have looked a bit surprised.

“Old houses, noisy plumbing,” Mrs Hudson explained and placed a bright salad before me.

“Right, of course,” I replied. “So Billy doesn’t stay here, I take it,” I said, admiring the cherry tomatoes and walnuts, yellow cheese and capers amid the green leaves. “This looks delicious.”

“Thank you, dear. Spinach is good for your blood,” she said and placed a smaller dish of pickled beetroot by my water glass. “Billy’s out running errands most of the time,” she said, “but he does have a room here.”

_One more for your roster, Doctor Watson._

“He looked a bit peaky when I saw him last night,” I commented. “Aren’t you going to join me?”

“Oh, I had my lunch already, but I’ll bring my tea up and have dessert with you later. I made fresh ice cream,” she said and tapped a cover she had not lifted yet. “Mains in there and afterwards I’ll take you around more of the house. Sherlock asked me to do that before he dashed off.”

“Where to?” I asked.

Mrs Hudson shook her head. “He rarely says, but have a look at your letter, he may have told you.” She picked up an empty mug from a side table on her way to the door. “I’ve got something in the oven,” she said, “I’ll be back in a half hour or so. Bon appétit, John.”

“Thank you,” I called and grabbed the dinner knife to slit open the envelope.

> Directions in lab notebook for overseeing experiment in progress, enter findings at indicated intervals. Expect to be back in two to three days. Mrs Hudson can acquaint you with more of the house in the meantime. Make yourself at home. SH
> 
> PS She is a tolerable harpist, if you would like instruction.

Everything got grayer. I glanced out the window to see if it had started to rain, but the sky appeared unchanged. I read the message again as I walked to the lab to consult the notebook. My appetite had disappeared. Attending to the lab work immediately held a greater attraction than eating, but after perusing the new entries and checking the samples I saw that there was nothing to be done for another two hours.

I returned to the table and sat, took a bite of salad and then another. Mrs Hudson would be upset if she came back and I had not eaten a thing and it did not make sense to waste the food and end up hungry later when I would need to be alert in the lab.

_It’s tough work, but somebody’s got to do it._

“Yeah,” I muttered as I chewed.

My tongue registered the textures and the flavours and my brain pronounced them good, but it did not equal the pleasure I had felt devouring the cinnamon toast in my room.

_Come now, Watson. It’s a boon. You’ll have time to learn the lay of the land, read up on subjects relating to the experiments, maybe learn a song._

Why would I learn a song?

_Because he suggested you take lessons on the harp he loaned you. Take a hint. Perhaps he likes his doctors musical._

I wish I could turn you off.

_Hah!_

Well I might laugh at myself. His absence was an opportunity. It just did not feel like one.

_When you heard he had gone out, you assumed he would be back by evening, so you could present your copybook and perhaps get a gold star at the top of a page._

Weren’t you just urging me to learn a song? It's a probationary period; one wants to put one’s best foot forward. Can’t you just shut up for a bit?

_You know how other members of your family get those irritating voices to shut up._

Not taking that route.

I set the empty salad bowl aside and took a peek into the covered platter. Two roasted birds sat on a bed of rocket, small roasted potatoes and large mushrooms circling them. I inhaled the spicy steam. My appetite perked up.

_Heaven is expanding._

Don’t push it. Be happy I’m eating.

_I am happy._

Good.

There was a restful silence in my head as I transferred food to my plate then held the nearer bird in place with a fork while deciding which section I wished to cut into first.

_As a surgeon, shouldn’t you be able to carve that bird faster?_

My knife went into the fowl with more force than was strictly required for the task.

*** 

“Oh, you’ve done a fine job, Doct…John,” Mrs Hudson said, casting a smiling eye over the empty dishes. “Mrs Turner will be pleased.”

“That was marvellous," I said, patting my stomach and smiling. I considered the name Turner. It was familiar, but I could not recall why. "Who is Mrs Turner?” 

“She’s our cook,” Mrs Hudson said, placing another tray on the table, this one holding two glass dishes and a plate of tiny biscuits.

“Oh…” I said, still searching my memory.

“I just like to experiment with desserts,” Mrs Hudson said, “baking mostly.” She placed one dish before me and another across the table and sat down facing me. “Although, I cook when she’s on holiday or under the weather now and then.” She nudged the plate of biscuits closer to me. “Take a few of those. Bite of biscuit first, then the ice cream.”

She watched me expectantly as I complied.

The biscuits were still warm. Lemony, shortbread-y things I discovered when I ate one. “That is lovely,” I said and the memory of Sherlock telling me who Mrs Turner was returned to me. 

_Mustn't forget one of your patients._

I was half asleep over dinner last night.

“Now the ice cream,” she urged, beaming.

I took a spoonful, closed my mouth around it…

> “Lie down in lavender, John.”
> 
> I couldn’t see who had spoken, but I knew the voice. It drew me out from among the tall trees onto the meadow, silvery in the moonlight, sloping away into shadows. A fragrance rose as I walked through the tall flowers, the earth between them warm under my bare feet.
> 
> “Lie down.”
> 
> I stretched out amidst the plants; stalks bending beneath me, leaves tickling my cheeks as I turned my head from side to side.
> 
> “Where are you?” I whispered.
> 
> “Here,” he said. “I’m here, John.”
> 
> And I felt his breath by my ear.
> 
> I tried to look, but there was only shadow, the heat of his tongue and the weight of him pressing me into the warm earth suffused with the scent of lavender.

“John, John.”

This voice was different.

“John…Doctor Watson, are you all right?”

I opened my eyes. Mrs Hudson had walked around to my side of the table. Her arm was on my shoulder.

“Are you all right, dear?” she repeated.

I reached up, unclenched my teeth and drew the spoon out of my mouth.

“My goodness, you’re not allergic to it, are you?” she asked.

I shook my head slowly. “What flavour is that?” I asked because it did not taste like anything I had ever had before.

“Lavender, dear,” she said. “Our very own lavender.”

 

I set the glass of water down. “I’m so sorry I alarmed you,” I said. “A dream from last night came back to me. Vividly. The flavour, I think, brought it to mind.”

“Oh,” Mrs Hudson said. “Gracious, you did give me a fright. Maybe it’s because of the fragrance in your sheets. I put lavender in all the linen cupboards and the wardrobes, too. Was it a nightmare, dear?” she asked, her brow furrowing further.

I rubbed my hand over my face and let out a long breath. “No, no, only a dream. Not even one I can recall that clearly, there was only a flash of it.” That I had felt with my whole body. Fortunately, I was seated.

“Well, I’ll clear this away, then. I’m so sorry,” she said.

I reached out for my dish. “No, please. I’d like to finish it. It was such a strong image,” I said. “It quite took me away again to remember it.”

She withdrew her hand. “If you’re sure, dear. Sherlock had said it would be a pleasant surprise for you when he suggested I make it this morning and he's usually right about such things.”

_Oh._

“Oh,” I said and some new web of sensation ran through my body. “It is. Please, sit. I’m fine.”

She went back to her seat, keeping her eye on me as she went.

We both picked up our spoons. I worked on not closing my eyes as I took each spoonful into my mouth and I succeeded. I made myself smile and nod just a bit as I ate, but I did not speak.

I was listening to the voice by my ear saying, “Lie down in lavender,” while the confection melted on my tongue.

*** 

I stayed up late in the library, loathe to abandon my work until the words started to run together on my laptop screen and my weary eyes sought relief in the gentle shift of the shadows along the walls and in the far corners of the room. 

I had copied a concise version of my notes into Sherlock's lab book and typed the rough text, complete with the many questions my observations had raised, into a document on my laptop. A number of books and journals surrounded my seat at the same table where I had had lunch. I had found most of the reference works I had needed in the library, books and journals on zoology and haematology and infectious diseases, and additional sources in the online databases whose passwords had been added to the lab book along with the directions. Both had clearly been written in haste. Despite the records of past results and the directions for the procedures to follow in his absence, there had been no explanation of the objectives of the research. Their absence intrigued me. It suggested that he had not expected to need to explain his purpose to anyone at this stage. I began to entertain the flattering notion that the role of research assistant had been added to the job description during our interview. I worked all the more assiduously because of it.

There had been further blood samples in the lab refrigerator and the pathogens I had found on the slides I prepared had become rarer and rarer. For hours, I had been saying to myself just one more as I clipped another slide to the platform of the microscope.

The only touring that had been accomplished had been directly after lunch. When I had explained what time I had to be back to attend to the experiments, Mrs Hudson had decided it would be best to go straight up to the roof and leave the labyrinth of rooms for another day.

I leaned back in my chair, stretched my arms out to my sides and over my head.

If I had not had a deadline, I could have happily spent the rest of the day up there in the outdoor gardens or in one of the conservatories that maintained different climates for non-native plants. There had even been an apiary and a pigeon roost. Mrs Hudson had proudly explained that it was inhabited by carrier pigeons some of whose forebears had delivered messages during both the world wars and earlier conflicts as well. I had noted the bands the birds wore above their feet and as we walked away had mentioned that I thought war pigeons had been made obsolete by modern communications. Mrs Hudson had gravely advised me not to repeat that within earshot of the birds.

In our meanderings, we passed several stairways leading down from the roof, but I would not venture to use any but the one we had employed to ascend or the other we had taken down when the time to return to the library had approached. I had been thinking to go up again before bed, but I persisted with the research too long and the likelihood of getting lost would have been rather high. I had a desire to see the moon from up there, but resigned myself to leaving it for another night.

*** 

Despite my fatigue, I took a shower before sleeping. I did not bother with my toiletries, instead making use of the hand-labelled bottles ranged along the stone counter between the two copper basins in the bathroom. They were, as I suspected they might be, scented with lavender.

I was damp and fragrant as I stared out the balcony doors and rubbed the towel over my hair. The moon was high enough to brighten the upper half of the courtyard’s eastern side. The bare branches of the climbing vines cast gnarled shadows on the wall. The garden below was dark except for the glitter of the fountain’s spray and a few gleams on the wet curves of the statues surrounding the central pillar. 

I stepped closer to the window. The fountain in the courtyard I had visited was not so tall nor did it have statues; it had been a modest feature with a column about my height ringed with carved ivy and a gentle spout burbling at the top. The distraction of Lestrade’s arrival had followed and although I had now seen from the roof that the Manor’s buildings enclosed several courtyards, I had forgotten to ask which one my room overlooked. Perhaps the upwards hand-waving while we had been in the courtyard had been a general indication of a room on the upper floors.

Draping the towel around my neck, I wrapped my dressing gown more tightly about me and opened the balcony doors. The chill air raised goose flesh on my warm skin and would have driven me back inside, but for the rhythmic shimmer of light about the fountain. I pulled the curtains closed behind me and moved to the railing, leaning over.

Slowly, my eyes adjusted to the dark. The outlines of pairs of figures took shape, clasped together back to front, ringing most of the way around the tree-like centre sculpture. The inner statue of the nearest pair seemed to cling to the tree, the statue behind pressing close, its nearer arm disappearing around its mate’s waist, the forearm of the other leaning against the tree above its partner’s head. A couple shallow steps bridged the fountain’s pool at the point on the tree trunk without figures.

I narrowed my eyes in the faint light. Water poured down the backs of the outer statues, splashed over the little bridge. It was this movement of the water that was catching the light and making the figures seem to undulate. I scanned the other balconies looking for sources of light other than the moon. There was nothing but deeper shadows, almost human in shape, against the dark windows as though others looked out on the scene from their balconies with the same interest as I. The plash of the fountain reverberated from the courtyard walls, sounding like sighs in the confined space. The shapes on the balconies seemed to merge, shifting with a rhythm that matched the fall of the water.

I shivered.

Despite the temporary refreshment of my shower, my fatigue had obviously reached the stage where my senses were not to be trusted. I retreated inside, shut the door gently as though it might be thought rude to withdraw before...

_By whom and before what?_

I don't know.

I did know, felt it in the clench of my stomach and the tension in my thighs.

I latched the doors firmly. I could go down to the courtyard in the daylight and examine the fountain to my heart’s content. 

I hurried to the bed, dropped my towel and dressing gown over its foot, slipped out of my slippers and between the sheets, burrowing under the heavy covers.

I was surrounded by the scent of lavender.

*** 

Perhaps I slept.

 

My eyes perceived only shadows above me, but my muscles felt his weight, the lesser or greater give of bone or sinew. Lips suckled at my neck, teeth nipped at my ear and a rampant cock rutted between my thighs.

“Two can play at this,” I said aloud and my arms wrapped about him. I thrust upward with one hip and rolled us over.

I heard him gasp. It was a sweet, surprised sound. 

“My aim is true,” I said. “Let me show you.” I thrust with vigour against his smooth skin, perceived the muscles rippling beneath it with the most sensitive part of me. My lips sought the warm join of his neck and shoulder, found it and bit down there. 

Oh, he tasted like lavender.

“Something different tonight, then,” he whispered, arm curving behind my neck, muscles taut as he rolled me onto my back once more.

My breathing came more quickly. 

He clamped his legs about my thighs and reared up over me. Without the veil of his shadow, the stars blazed and I saw that the moon was touching the treetops. Our kisses had taken more time than I had thought.

Dread that he would disappear when it set filled me. I dug my fingers into his hips and strained upwards. The sky dimmed.

His lips were at my ear. I wanted them on my mouth.

“Do not despair. You will know the feel of me when only the stars remain in the sky to watch." The tip of his tongue traced the edge of my ear. "Even in utter darkness you could feel me, if your desire proves strong enough."

I clasped him to me with arms and legs and teeth.

Like a wreath of smoke, he eluded my grasp and rose.

I stretched after him.

His hands closed about my forearms, pulling me to my feet with such force I collided with him. It knocked the wind out of me. He held me long enough for me to feel his cock firm against my stomach. “We must take cover," he whispered, "if I am to keep my promise to you. There are others abroad tonight who might like to have you, too.”

With that, he pulled away, his fingertips gliding across my chest and down my arm, and then he was gone.

Like an arrow, I sped down the moonlit slope after a shifting shadow and into the dark beneath the trees.

There was a stream curving through the wood. Over the rush of the water, I fancied I could hear the plash of his footsteps. I followed over the rounded rocks below the cold current, shivering and intent.

The brook spilled into a glade, smaller than the meadow and flat. In its centre, a massive oak tree grew. The moon shone through its bare branches. The stream disappeared beneath its roots.

I saw nothing but the shadows of the branches, heard naught but the murmur of the stream. I slumped against a tree, rubbed my forehead against the rough bark.

_Chasing phantoms again, Watson?_

Leave me in peace.

_You don’t seem at peace._

A bird trilled. A twig snapped. I took a step further behind the tree upon which I leaned.

There were voices, a laugh. The bird whistled and warbled.

I peered around the trunk of my shielding tree.

High in the oak, a small shape hopped from branch to branch, singing as though its heart would burst.

The voices grew louder; I did not detect his. The laughter rose higher; I could not hear his. There was the jingle and thump of a tambourine.

A woman glided out of the trees. Her dark hair was piled high on her head, her cloak was picked with silvery threads. She swirled about the tree, shrugged the cape from her shoulders and tossed her head until her tresses fell, her hair pins flying into the grass glittering with captured moonbeams. She paused an instant, facing towards me.

I hunched my shoulders, squinted my eyes nearly shut least their gleam betray me.

She clicked her fingers together and twirled away.

Another woman ran from the woods, her hair already loose, her cloak streaming behind her. She caught the first lady by the waist and spun her round, then pressed her against the oak tree with a passionate kiss. Her cape fell. The moonlight shone on the swell of her arse.

The tambourine player arrived with a jangle. He had garters of bells below his knees and above his elbows and naught else I could see. He thumped his drum near the women’s heads.

An arm waved him away and returned to its caressing.

He capered about the tree, jingling and laughing up into its branches or peering into the surrounding woods by turn, his cock bouncing to the rhythm to which he beat his drum.

A pair of lovers tumbled from the shadows, their arms entwined, their cocks full against their stomachs. They stumbled towards the tree and leaned upon it heavily, facing one another, kissing and stroking, each lifting one leg to caress the other, as though two hands were inadequate to the task.

Their touches echoed on my skin. They fired my blood and enhanced my disappointment.

I did not think the one I sought would be part of this parade.

A tall woman joined the group. She undid the knot of cloth at her shoulder and let her garment fall. She caught the musician on his next circuit, hooking a finger in one of the bands about his arms. He looked up at her, his hand poised above his tambourine. She plucked it from his grasp, tossed it onto the cloth at her feet and pulled him round to the far side of the oak. I could not see them at all, but I heard him jingle.

The youngest branches of the oak trembled with the activities of the lovers about its bore. The bird sang, full-throated, in its branches.

I sighed.

Strong arms closed about me from behind. A long finger pressed against my lips, a long cock nestled in the ridge of my back. His voice at my ear was no louder than the rustle of a dried leaf. “Do you want to join them?” he asked and one of his hands stroked the proof of my interest. “There’s still a place around the oak.” He dropped his hand from my mouth, to spread it below my heart. He held me firmly against him, his spine flexing in time to the jingling of the bells.

I took a deep breath of lavender and my muscles went slack. “You could have me there,” he whispered. His palm rubbed against my chest. “But then the rest of them would, too.”

I tensed in his arms.

“It is a sharing tree, you see.”

I covered his hand with mine, pressed it hard against my heart.

“Can you be silent, John?” he asked and his hand stilled on my cock.

I nodded. He smiled against my ear, kissed it once, then twice beneath it, then lower still. He sucked hard at the flesh at that juncture and his hand tightened on me.

I held in every sound, did not allow even a hum to vibrate in my throat. I felt his smile again. Oh, to please him was a pleasure. 

His hand caressed my balls, nudged my thighs apart. His fingers stroked the skin between my legs, behind my balls; his tongue flicked over the skin of my throat.

How he played me. I was trembling with the effort to utter no sound and make no sudden movements. For him, silence seemed second nature.

He brought his hand up to my mouth.

I touched it lightly with my tongue and was rewarded with a smile once more. I licked more liberally, drawing his fingers into my mouth.

Slowly, he drew them away, slipped them back between my legs.

It took resolve to remain silent.

I felt his cock slide into place. I tensed the muscles of my thighs, released them and contracted them again, falling, without meaning to, into the rhythm of the bells. He sucked at my neck and his hand returned to my cock more intent in its motions that it had been before.

Everything was tightening inside me. I pressed my lips together, my balls drew up. 

He grasped my cock near the head, a flick, a twist, the touch of a maestro. 

I spilled and spilled; his other hand rubbing it over my belly then down between my thighs. I tried to hold them tightly together for him, but my muscles were relaxing, my mind beginning to drift. I tried harder. 

His forearm was like iron across my abdomen, his legs like vices either side of mine as he thrust.

I gripped his forearm with one hand, braced my other arm against the tree and shoved my hand against my mouth. I was as still as the tree trunk upon which I leaned.

Around us, not a twig stirred with his motion, as though he were no more than a whiff of smoke. 

From the glade, the jingling rose to a crescendo and ceased.

Wet warmth trickled down my thighs. He dragged his cock back and up between my buttocks, pressed it against the tender spot and spent his last against me there.

 

The arch of my back eased. I stretched and rolled onto my side and slept. 

*** 

I conducted a self-examination before my shower. That I had ejaculated was an understatement. It almost seemed as though I had done so twice. I even used a hand mirror. There was dry semen everywhere, but my muscle was unstretched. Perhaps it was an odd thing to do, but the dream had been powerful in its sensations. It appeared that lavender had a hallucinogenic effect on me and an aphrodisiacal one as well. I lathered and shampooed in the fragrance.

_Indulging a bit?_

I plan to indulge much more.

*** 

I left the bath with an expectation of tea and I was not disappointed. Accompanying it were several pieces of lemon shortbread and a dish of peeled blood orange sections. My appetite reared its head at the first whiff of them and there was nothing but rosy juice left on the plate by the time I poured myself a second cup of tea.

Outside my windows, the day shone brighter than its predecessor and the slant of its beams told me that I had slept even later. I dressed and went out on the balcony to examine the courtyard by the sunshine that poured down on it. Baskerville was snuffling along the periphery of the flowerbeds in a leisurely manner, the sunlight bringing out highlights of auburn in his dark coat. At the nexus of the courtyard’s walkways the fountain played gently, its details clearly visible from my vantage. They were of the modest proportions and design I recalled from my stroll through the garden, rather than the images I thought I had observed before sleeping. As I finished my tea, I concluded that the view of it from my windows had been part of my dream rather than something I had actually seen before sleeping. 

_But last night wasn't the first time you saw them._

I paused, cup in mid-air.

I was very tired that first time. There was little light.

_Your vision is superb, Watson. Your night vision as well. You wouldn't be the marksman you are otherwise._

One place by day and another at night? But I first saw this version of it at night. What am I supposed to conclude from this?

_He said the house had quirks. It has more floors than it should._

Weren't you arguing for architectural tricks, set-back from the façade and so forth?

_Don't you think we're past that now, Watson? Why the resistance on this point?_

Lust does strange things to perception. I don't want to act on my own wishful thinking and offend him.

_Cowardice._

Caution.

_Don't be too cautious for too long, Watson._

Fine.

I expelled a long breath and set the cup down. 

***

I had recorded my next set of observations on the experiment in the laboratory when I heard Mrs Hudson in the library. I hung up the extra lab coat I had found the day before behind the door, the one that fit me as though it had been tailored to my measurements.

“Good morning, John,” Mrs Hudson said as I joined her, shutting the laboratory door behind me. I had noticed that I did not care for its light shining into the library, as though the two aesthetics should not intrude on one another.

“I hope you slept well,” she said. “You’re as bad as Sherlock for staying up to the wee hours or beyond, but at least you take some rest afterwards.” She was uncovering dishes as she spoke and fine fragrances were calling me to my seat at table.

“He doesn’t?” I enquired, unfolding my serviette and surveying what she had set out. “It looks as beautiful as it smells.”

She smiled. “Oh, from time to time he sleeps a whole day and night through, but many’s the day he only catnaps on that sofa for an hour or two or even not at all if he has a particularly interesting case.” She poured some water from a jug and motioned for me to eat. “I always worry when he goes away on his consultations that he won’t bother to sleep or eat. He comes back so pale and drawn.”

“Does he travel far? Jet lag really afflicts some people,” I said and spread my serviette on my lap.

“Go on, then,” she urged with a shooing motion.

I took up my fork.

“He doesn’t often say where he’s been, but occasionally he’ll bring something back and it could be from Singapore or Southampton. If the case is interesting he doesn’t care how far, but he won’t even go to Mayfair if he doesn’t find it interesting,” she said, sitting down and taking up her tea cup.

I sampled a bit of salad. “Oh, that is lovely,” I murmured as the flavour of the dressing on the greens suffused my mouth.

“I am glad, dear,” Mrs Hudson said, watching me keenly.

I had a feeling she was checking me for allergic reactions.

“I’m not allergic to any foods I know of,” I said.

“Well,” she replied, “while we’re getting to know what agrees with you, I thought it might be best to sit with you. “That dressing has wine from the Vernet chateau in France.”

“I enjoy the company,” I said.

She smiled again.

“Vernet? I’m not familiar with that label,” I said simply to say something. I am not a connoisseur of wine, but the hand-written labels on the wines we had had with our first dinner came to mind.

_Your only dinner._

Fine.

“Oh, it’s a private vineyard. Vernet was Sherlock’s grandmother’s maiden name,” Mrs Hudson said.

“Does he go to France often, then?” I asked. It was hard to concentrate with the different sensations that were going on in my mouth.

“Not like he used to when he was a child,” she said. “When I was a girl, we would go for the whole summer. It was glorious.”

I looked up at that. “When did you start working here?” I asked.

She tilted her head. “Close to ten years now since I came back from Florida. It took me a while to sort everything out after Frank’s execution.” She shook her head. “Time does fly.”

My eyebrows shot up, but I brought them down fast. “Oh,” I said as neutrally as possible.

“Sherlock helped me with that. Came all the way to Florida and I don’t think the case was that interesting. He’s such a good boy,” she said.

“But he wasn’t able to prevent the execution?” I asked and immediately regretted it. “Oh, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”

She reached across the table and patted my hand. “That wasn’t what I asked him to help with,” she said.

I was puzzled, but forbore asking another intrusive question.

“I was nearly forty when I met Frank in New York, definitely old enough to have known better, but I didn’t. He was a handsome devil,” she said, carrying on without further prodding from me. “A real charmer and we, well, we couldn’t keep our hands off of each other. It was years before I realised he was involved in drug dealing. So when he got arrested for killing a few of his competitors and it looked like he was going to get off the charges because of a lack of solid evidence, I called Sherlock. He’s always helping the police out. He helped the Florida police out and practically walked the prosecutor through the evidence. So Frank didn’t charm his way out of that one,” she concluded and took a long drink of tea.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Charm can be a dangerous thing,” she said, “but you look like you are more level-headed than to be taken in by it.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” I said.

I had checked my neck for bruises in the morning. That was how vivid the dream had been. I had only spent a few hours with him and his charm had certainly taken hold.

_Time for a new topic of conversation._

“So you started work here and then moved to the States?” I asked.

She took my empty salad dish away, set a covered dish before me and lifted the dome off.

I laughed.

“We thought we’d be traditional today,” she said and put a cruet of vinegar near me before she sat back down.

“I didn’t work here when I was young, but all my grandparents did. Da, my mother’s father, was the head gardener and Nan did what I do now, the undergardener was Papa’s father and his mother was the pastry cook. Mrs Turner’s mother was the cook,” she said, smiling again. “We were all born at the Manor.”

I looked up from the battered cod I was cutting. “Was there a doctor in residence then, too?”

She nodded. “Old Doctor Hooper. He got me through measles when I was a wee one. He only died a couple months ago. In his nineties, at least, he was. Kind man, always smiling. His daughter’s a doctor, too. Been working at St Bartholomew’s in the morgue for a few years now.”

“Her father always hoped she would carry on after him here. He asked her about it when he was dying, but her mother thought it would be better if she stayed in the job she had where she was already established and where it was ‘more social’,” Mrs Hudson said and took a sip of tea. “We all knew Molly was sweet on Sherlock; he was her first crush. She never grew out of it, but that was never going to happen. She still gives him blood and body parts when he wants them for experiments though, poor dear.”

I wondered if Mike knew Dr Hooper, the younger. “Does her mother live here?” I asked. The list of residents I had not yet met was growing.

“Meredith boxed everything up and went to Australia to visit a cousin shortly after the funeral. I have a feeling she won’t be coming back, but she could. Her old rooms are empty. She was the last of the musicians, you see. She’d give me pointers on my playing. She plays like an angel, although it was Dr Hooper’s first wife who taught me how to play the harp. She died in a motor accident down on Marylebone Road, but that was after we had moved away. I still hear her voice if I pluck a wrong note,” Mrs Hudson added.

“But your parents didn’t want to work here?” I asked. She seemed inclined to talk and I was finding every bit of background information interesting.

Mrs Hudson poured herself another cup of tea and gazed over my shoulder for a moment. “It’s hard to say what might have happened if Papa hadn’t inherited the florist’s shop in Bath from his great uncle Angus.”

I hummed attentively and took a forkful of peas.

“But he did, just after he came back from his time in the Army. I remember being confused when Mama and Papa told me over dinner one night that we were going to live in Bath because I thought it strange that we would leave our nice rooms off the courtyard to live in the hammam.”

“Hammam?” I repeated.

“Oh, you haven’t seen them yet. I am way behind in showing you the house, but that experiment Sherlock left you with is taking up so much of your time. There are proper Turkish baths under the courtyard your room looks onto.”

“I noticed the glass bricks in the walkways,” I said. “I thought they were for decoration.”

“They are pretty, aren’t they? But they also let light down into the hammam. Anytime you want a proper steaming and scrubbing, just say, and we’ll get the boilers going and tell Billy. Sherlock says he gives an excellent massage…”

The image caused a twist in my stomach that was not conducive to digestion at all.

“…of course, Mrs Turner and I can do for each other. All of us used to go once a week when I was little, Mama and Nan and Margaret, that’s Mrs Turner, and her mother. Margaret and I would comb out each other’s hair when we got old enough to do that on our own. These days I find the heat helps my hip. Are you all right, John.”

“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” I assured her. “It’s been a long while since I’ve had a proper massage.”

_As opposed to physiotherapy._

Indeed.

“Are you certain you’re okay?” she asked.

“Absolutely,” I said and scooped some mashed potatoes onto my fork. “So what happened in Bath?”

“My parents ran the shop; my mother handled the bookkeeping and the ordering. My father made up the bouquets and did some cross-breeding in the little greenhouse out back of the shop and my sister was born,” she said. “That’s when I started coming back to spend the summers with my grandparents here or in France. Nan said it gave Mama some time alone with Lily, like she had had with me. I did that every year until Papa got a very good offer for the shop and decided he would take it and we would emigrate to Canada. After that it was too far to visit every year. In fact, I didn’t until I came for Da’s funeral. I had already moved to New York by then. I had dreams of dancing on Broadway, you see.” She sighed. “Life does take some unexpected twists and turns.”

“Yes, it does,” I said, setting down my silverware.

“Oh,” she said, “here I am going on about twists and turns to you with all the changes you’ve just had.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “I may be getting used to them.”

“Well, your leg’s got better; that’s a fine thing,” she said.

“It is,” I agreed and mixed the last of the peas with the final bit of potato on my fork.

She checked my plate. “Look how well you’ve done. It is a pleasure feeding someone who has a good appetite,” she said. “I’ll just bring these things down and get our dessert. It’s something I learned in America. I hope you like it.”

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’ll be a surprise,” she said, stacking everything up on the tray and whisking it out the door much faster than I would have thought someone with a bad hip could have managed. “Won’t be two ticks.”

I pulled an open journal on haematology closer and scanned the article for the place where I had left off.

“John! Doctor Watson!”

I was out of my chair and looking over the banister from the landing in an instant. Mrs Hudson was at the foot of the stairs. “Mrs Turner’s cut her hand. There’s blood everywhere.”

“Wrap it in a clean tea towel,” I called as I bounded up the stairs to my room. “Just getting my medical kit.” I grabbed my bag from the wardrobe and ran down again. The glass door at the back of the hall was open and I followed the smell of baking to the kitchen.

*** 

I closed the lab notebook, rose from my seat and stretched, vertebrae crackling. There was more research I wanted to do, but my head felt heavy and I thought some fresh air would clear it. Since out was not an option, I decided to go up.

_Chafing at the restrictions a bit?_

Oddly, no.

Our day’s explorations had been curtailed once more what with disinfecting Mrs Turner’s wound, stitching her up and calming her down. It had been a deep cut and it had bled a lot, but I assured her it would heal well if it was kept clean and dry. I gave her a mild analgesic and recommended she put her feet up for an hour or two and not put any pressure on the base of her thumb until I had taken the stitches out. My tableside manner had apparently been successful, because with a hand well-bandaged, she insisted on sitting at the table with her feet up on another chair while I tried Mrs Hudson’s apple pie American style.

It seemed that feeding me had become both a competitive and a spectator sport. I obliged, two servings worth, while we all shared a pot of coffee. I decided I was going to need to start running up and down the staircases several times a day, if I wasn’t going to roll out the door at the end of the month.

Instead of embarking on my exercise regime immediately, I went back to my tasks in the laboratory and the library. I explored more fully the databases to which Mr Holmes subscribed, some of which I had not thought were open to outside researchers and others of which I was certain were not, in between the timed observations in the lab.

  


In the late afternoon, Mrs Hudson arrived with plates of sandwiches and fresh fruit and a pot of tea, advising me that Mrs Turner was much refreshed and enjoying having Mrs Hudson be her sous-chef for the time being.

When I had nourished myself to her satisfaction, she insisted I at least see the conservatories that we had not had time for the day before and so we did.

In my view, they were worthy of Kew Gardens, although I have not been there since I was a child so my memories were little more than vague impressions of lush foliage and towering glass roofs. The Manor’s conservatories, as distinguished from a couple small nurseries I saw tucked into nooks by chimney pots and filled mostly with seedlings or pots yet to sprout, were more than two storeys high and complete with trees. One, which Mrs Hudson identified as the tropical one, was very humid and the other pleasantly warm one catered to the sub-tropical plants. There were white spiral staircases to viewing galleries and lower areas with wide half walls where one could sit and marvel without falling over when one had craned one’s neck back too far.

That these were perched above the traffic of Baker Street, set back just far enough that they were invisible to the passers-by below, was amazing. I exclaimed freely in that vein as we walked around and Mrs Hudson glowed with filial pride as she pointed out trees and vines and large shrubs that had been the nurslings of her grandfather and in some cases, his father before him. The gardens outside the conservatories were remarkable enough and I understood that I was seeing them at their least impressive season, but the conservatories were in a different category. After some more expressions of astonishment on my part, Mrs Hudson started pointing out the plants that had medicinal purposes or were poisonous and I realised that those two, sometimes overlapping, categories covered most of them.

We descended via a third route that led to a small corridor outside the kitchen. I checked on Mrs Turner, who was perusing a very thick, very old book of what appeared to be hand-written recipes and managed to escape the kitchen without being fed anything else. I did take a cup of coffee with me though.

 

And so I had returned once more to the library, with an expanded pharmacological aspect to my informal research objectives. It was from these labours I had finally risen, stiff of neck and numb of buttocks, and decided I could make my way up to the roof and back without getting lost and having to summon Mrs Hudson from her slumbers. It was approaching midnight and out the window I could see that the moon was just cresting the housetops. The sky was clear and as far as I could hear, there was no wind. All seemed auspicious for my journey.

I went to my room for a jacket and came back to the library. I considered going down to the kitchen and up the way I had most recently used, but I was not sure the various inner doors I would need to pass through would be unlocked at this time of night and thought I could remember the route we had taken from the ballroom equally well. It took me three tries to find the correct volume to pull down to open the bookcase and reach the music room, but after that delay, my progress was smooth. I did have to stand on a stool to open the panel between the minstrel galleries though.

It was brisk when I emerged into the air, a faint breeze stirring the evergreen leaves about me. I grinned at my achievement and took my bearings, hedge of rosemary along the half-wall to my left, holly tree in the corner to my right. Satisfied that I could locate the door to the stairs again, I turned east towards the gibbous moon.

Somewhere in the dark, hyacinths bloomed. I took a deep breath. I had not seen or smelled them in the day, but the rooftop was a maze around the courtyards and skylights. There were few straight lines of sight and doubtless many nooks that we had not needed to cross to reach the conservatories. 

A fox yapped. I grinned. They are handsome, but unmelodious, creatures.

_Unlike someone else._

Shh.

As well as the paths and shrubs allowed, I was fairly sure I was meandering roughly parallel to Melcombe Street. The light grew brighter as the moon rose higher and I spied a gate in the perimeter wall. A jasmine vine climbed over the rounded arch above the gate and three small steps led up to it. I wondered if there was a terrace outside the walls or a fire escape. I had no detailed memories of the buildings around the corner, my journeys in the area usually starting from the station and heading towards the park. I was on the top step in a moment, more than a little surprised at the intensity of my curiosity. The door possessed an oval peephole, but the mesh covering it was so closely woven that it yielded nothing to my enquiring eye. I tried the handle and smiled as a latch gave way. I pushed against the swollen wood and the door swung open.

The air was colder on the other side, the moon brighter. Its light revealed a narrow ledge ending in a single course of rough-hewn stones that did not rise above my shin, which appeared to mark the edge of the roof. I stepped over the threshold.

I smelled the trees, the damp bark, the leaf mould and the moss. There was water running somewhere below me. An owl hooted. A wolf howled. The breeze grew stronger.

I shuffled closer, knelt by the parapet and peered over it into the night.

My eyes searched for the landmarks they knew so well in vain. None of the coloured lights that garland a city street lent their glow to the view below me. No headlamps reflected in shop windows. No well-lit buses growled by. Only the moon outlined the bare crowns of innumerable trees and elicited a faint glimmer from a waterway that wound beneath them and out of sight.

_Something in the food?_

The meal was hours behind me. I had read and written and observed through the microscope for the entire evening after it. Anything that could produce this result, would have noticeably interfered with those tasks.

_Are you asleep in the library?_

I doubt my fatigue before I decided on an evening stroll was that extreme, although I cannot discount a dream completely, as vivid as my recent dreams have been.

In some effort towards external verification, I extended my hand past the parapet, snagged my flesh on something sharp. I swore under my breath. The moonlight showed the jagged scratch clearly. I touched the ridges of torn flesh, felt the sting at the contact, the wetness of the single bead of blood.

_And if you are neither hallucinating nor dreaming, Watson, what then? Can the stories be true?_

Never heard of one like this.

_Not a whole story no, but mention of a vast wooded estate upon which the Manor sat between the heath and the river._

I craned my neck over the rim of the stone and tried to see as much of the wall as I could in the moonlight. Looking straight down yielded little data. The wall appeared to be covered in vines, some of which still bore leaves. Close to my perch, a specimen reached up into the air without any support but its own thorn-studded stoutness, which was easily as thick as my wrist. Climbing up or down that wall would be a dangerous enterprise indeed.

_Defensive flowers._

They would smell sweet in their season.

The distance down was considerably farther than the height of the building I had studied from the pavement of Baker Street. It was the equivalent of several storeys before the outer branches of the surrounding trees brushed against it and obscured where its stones rose from the ground.

I raised my eyes and beheld a sea of trees that rolled away from the wall until their canopy merged with the clouds on the horizon.

A glint of white streaked across the sky, a fleck of fallen moonbeam.

_Fanciful, Watson._

I may have crossed into the land of poets and madmen; I should use their language.

The streak grew larger as it glided towards me. With a flutter, a bird alit on the parapet a metre from my face and presented its sharp-beaked head in profile then turned to regard me. Its dark, gold-rimmed eyes gleamed.

I drew back, still crouched, my hand on the low wall to steady me.

The bird sidled closer, the white of its barred breast feathers reflecting the moonlight. It spread and refolded its wings repeatedly as though ambivalent about remaining or taking its leave. A silver band twinkled above the talons of one yellow leg. When it took flight, a feather fell onto the stone.

I grabbed it before it could blow away and tucked it in my pocket. I wanted proof.

About me, shadows wavered as clouds hurried past the moon. Below me, branches clattered. The air grew chill.

I glanced at the open doorway and the urge to be on the other side of it seized me.

_As though things are ordinary there._

“More ordinary than this,” I said aloud and stood.

My head spun. I stumbled towards the threshold, reaching for the gate. Through the doorway, I could see the moon high and clear in the sky above the roof gardens. It raced away from me.

My stomach roiled.

Heights do not trouble me. Open-bayed helicopters and jumps from aeroplanes have not been a problem. 

My hand did not reach the door jamb. It clutched at the air. My toe caught on the raised edge of a stone, my head tilted back. The cloud-shrouded moon seemed remarkably close.

The arm about my waist was strong.

My shoes bumped over the threshold as I was dragged across it.

I heard the gate bang shut. I sagged against a firm chest, closed my eyes and took gulp after gulp of air. I knew that fragrance. Slowly, my stomach settled, my head ceased to spin. I found my legs, opened my eyes and looked up.

His skin was washed in moonlight, the shadows dark beneath his brows and in the hollows of his cheeks. He put the moon to shame.

“My arrival was timely,” he said, loosening his grip upon me.

I moistened my lips with the tip of my tongue. “Vertigo does not usually afflict me,” I said.

His arm rested upon my shoulders. He drew it away and seemed momentarily unsteady.

“The transition can be disorienting,” he said, pulling himself up to full height. “What did you see?”

Was he humouring me or had he offhandedly acknowledged the impossible?

_More household quirks?_

That would be one way to describe them.

“Things that cannot be,” I replied.

“Such as?” he prompted.

Had he concluded I had been hallucinating and wanted to see how wildly? I sighed. If I had been hallucinating, he should know. It’s not good to have a doctor who sees things that are not there. “A winter forest marching towards the horizon,” I said.

He stepped closer and put a hand on my shoulder.

“Interesting choice of verb,” he said.

“My word choice was what you found notable in what I just said?” I asked.

“It tells me not only what you saw, but what you felt about what you saw,” he answered softly, tilting his head. The moonlight illuminated more of his face.

I saw the dark marks on his cheek then. I reached up without asking leave and felt the blood half-dried along the scratches. The tips of my fingers were smeared with it when I pulled them away.

“I should see to that,” I said firmly, the last traces of my dizziness disappearing.

He smiled faintly. “I came to find you to ask for your help, Doctor,” he said.

“How did you know where I was?” I asked.

There was a flurry of wings and the falcon landed on his shoulder.

I gaped wide-eyed, pointed at the gate in the wall then at the bird. My eyes narrowed as I considered the wounds on Sherlock’s cheek.

He stroked the bird and it shifted closer to his head.

Its beak was too near his eyes for my comfort.

“Siròc told me you were here,” he said. “She thought you were in danger.” He patted the falcon and it took wing.

I thought the thickness of his coat must be a distinct advantage with such a pet and noticed the band was gone from her leg.

_Adapting are you, Watson?_

Falconry’s a lot easier to cope with than what else I saw or thought I saw.

_One step at a time._

“We should adjourn to the laboratory,” he said and gestured towards a different direction from the way I would have gone to seek the stairway.

He seemed unbalanced by the motion. He righted himself again, his coat flapping open for a moment in the process. 

I glimpsed dark patches on his white shirt. I was at his side, my hand beneath the coat in an instant. His shirt was damp and perhaps of equal concern was how heavily he leaned upon me.

“Where are the nearest stairs exactly?” I asked.

“The arbour behind the oleander,” he said.

Fortunately, I knew what an oleander was. More botanical study was necessary because I did not know the names of more than half the plants in the gardens.

I brought us to the door behind the arbour and six steps down brought us to a storeroom whose open door revealed the laboratory beyond.

_You went up several flights of stairs to reach the roof._

I’ll worry about that later.

“Wouldn’t your bedroom be better?” I asked. “I can bring my medical kit there.”

“Lab,” he said and the clipped answer spoke of pain suppressed.

Internal bleeding occurred to me, an analgesic that was wearing off.

I left Sherlock slumped against the lab table while I dragged two chairs from the library for him. A lab stool was not going to provide enough support.

His coat and jacket were sliding down his arms when I returned.

My vision sharpened when I saw the back of his shirt. I let the garments fall to the floor and guided him into one of the desk chairs I had brought. He sat heavily in it and I lifted his feet into the other. I removed his shoes, kicked them under the chair and scooped up his other garments and dropped them over a lab stool.

“What have you taken for the pain?” I asked, from the basin where I was scrubbing my hands.

“Morphine,” he said.

“When?” I asked.

“Nearly three hours ago,” he said, his head resting against the side of the lab table.

I had a thousand questions as to how he had sustained his injuries and why he had not sought more treatment than mere pain relief wherever he had been, but I forestalled them all and brought swabs and disinfectant and clean towels to the table.

He was fumbling with the button of his cuff.

I helped him undo it and roll the shirt sleeve up above his elbow. “Do you have morphine here?” I asked.

He nodded. “Not what I need first,” he said. “I need a transfusion.”

I grew very calm. “Have you lost that much blood?” I asked. His clothes did not reveal that level of bleeding. “Were you unconscious?”

“I don’t need much,” he said and his teeth were clenched as he spoke.

That made no sense.

“It acts as a catalyst,” he explained. His lips had grown pale, his skin faintly grey.

I could hear the effort expended to speak each word. Details could wait.

“Where is the blood?” I asked. All I had seen were the small test tube samples he had been using for his experiments.

He rolled his eyes and I thought he might faint before I realised he was simply exasperated. “You know,” he gritted out.

“I only know where the test samples are,” I said.

“Any of them will do,” he said. He was starting to shake.

I grabbed his jacket and draped it over his shoulders. “They’re not labelled by blood type and they’re contaminated,” I said.

“Blood type doesn’t matter,” he insisted. “Hurry. I can’t wait much longer.”

“How can…” I started. “…AB-positive?”

He nodded again. “There’re control samples at the back of the fridge,” he said.

I froze with my hand on the door of the refrigerator. There had been. I had used them for a side experiment that had occurred to me during my research.

“Do you have one of them yet?” he said. “One’s enough.”

“I used the uncontaminated blood,” I said.

He drew in a sharp breath. “A contaminated one will do. Any one. Quickly. Please.”

I could hear the mounting tension in his voice.

“One moment,” I said and had wiped the inside of my elbow with alcohol and inserted the needle in a matter of seconds. I was not giving him diseased blood. My blood flowed quickly into the vacutainer tube. I ejected it from the needle and inserted it into a fresh syringe and pulled my sleeve down.

His head had fallen forward, but he curled his fingers when I brushed the alcohol wipe over his forearm. His vein was easy to find against his pallid skin. I inserted the needle and depressed the plunger.

He sighed.

I pressed a bit of cotton wool to the small puncture wound.

He reached over with his other hand and held his forefinger against it.

I thought that a good sign.

“Shall I get you the morphine now?” I asked.

His head jerked up, his eyes wide. They flashed over me, stopped at the unbuttoned cuff of my shirt, the dot of blood on my sleeve.

“Oh, John,” he breathed. “The other blood would have been fine.”

“I wasn’t going to inject infected blood into your veins,” I said, glaring at him.

He met my gaze, shaking his head ever so slightly.

“Not so good at following orders,” he said, “surprising in a military man.”

“Not when I have a better solution,” I insisted.

“I am sorry for the pain this will cause you,” he said. “I should have anticipated your response.” He took his feet off the chair. “Sit, John,” he said, reaching inside his jacket. "You’re going to be needing this more than I will.” He extracted a slim, leather case from his jacket; unsnapped its fastenings. Wedged in the blue silk lining was a syringe and two ampules. A space for a third was empty.

I shook my head. “No, I don’t want that,” I said and looked from the case in his hands to his eyes. I winced and my hand flew to my cheek. While I stared, the scratches scoring his face from his cheekbone to his jaw finished fading away.

I inhaled suddenly and began tearing at the buttons of my shirt. My fingers were shaking, but I succeeded in undoing them and pulled the cloth aside.

_Regulate your breathing._

My nostrils flared as I watched scratches and gouges appear then vanish from my flesh.

“Your pain threshold is high,” Sherlock said.

The words had not been spoken through clenched teeth.

I glanced at him. The grey cast was leaving his face. His gaze was intent on my skin.

“It is rare for it to work so quickly,” he added.

“Why?” I asked and my voice went up at the end of the syllable. I bent double, rested my jaw on the edge of one knee and tried to breathe through it. My back was aflame. Under one arm, it felt as though a bite had been taken out of the muscle. My bullet wound was the only experience that was remotely analogous. I hoped I would not vomit on Sherlock’s feet.

“Your blood was fresh,” he said, his tone thoughtful, “and you are right here with me...”

I wasn’t sure I could speak, but the curiosity was as bright as the pain. “The others?” I managed to grit out.

“Most of the human samples are from patients who have died,” he said. “The uncontaminated ones were. All of them had been frozen for several months at a minimum and the living donors are scattered around the country. You've seen how rare most of the diseases are. Physical and temporal distance lessens the speed of the effect, but even old blood will work eventually. Someone who had donated blood months ago would have felt some slight discomfort, a twinge, a prickle, if I had used their blood tonight. Nothing remotely like what you are experiencing.”

I released my knees, let my arms hang limply by my legs. Tears were trickling down my cheeks. “And the other bloke?” I managed to enquire. Despite my desire to do so, I could not make any sound that resembled a laugh.

“The serpent is dead,” he stated.

The resonance was returning to his voice. I found it heartening even as the waves of pain rolled over me. I blew out a series of short breaths. “Wings?” I gasped.

“It was a serpent, not a dragon, John,” he replied with a hint of a laugh. 

That sounded so good.

“They're bites, not scratches," he clarified, "and it did have seven heads.”

“God!” I huffed.

“Nowhere near. Harder to kill than I would have thought though. He ambushed me when I was nearly home. It is disagreeable to confess that I had not detected his presence until he was almost upon me,” Sherlock said.

I felt the weight of his hand on my hair.

I sighed out the words, “Down in the woods.” He had been under those trees needing a good sword hand while I was puzzling out what I was seeing.

“A bit further away than you would have been able to spot from the parapet,” he said.

Had the threat to him been why I could see the woods at all? Had I been meant to climb down somehow? I was pleased I could still think.

His thumb was digging into the base of my skull, his fingers fanning out through my hair. His strength was returning. Whether it was that evidence or the pressure around my ears and over the crown of my head, I was not sure, but one of them was distracting me from the pain.

“Venom,” I said querulously.

“The blood will take care of it all,” he replied.

“But I…”

“You’re not actually injured, you’re feeling my injuries,” he answered, his fingertips rubbing circles at my temple. “Of course, the shock of extreme pain could kill you.”

The pain was ebbing. My shoulders slumped further. I felt his knees against mine. If the chairs had not been positioned so closely, I wondered if I might have slipped onto the floor.

“You have strong blood," he mused. 

The pain seemed to recede further at the compliment.

_O vanity!_

I'm in agony here, cut me some slack.

"We could age some in the freezer, so my using it would not affect you this intensely,” he continued. “ _If_ I should need blood again. I usually come away from such encounters with hardly a scratch.”

_Pride wounded there._

Mmm.

His fingers pushed beneath my collar, rubbing and squeezing the muscles at the top of my shoulders. He was using both hands now.

_Your patient is recovering well, Doctor._

It was the last thought I recalled having.

~~~~~~o0o~~~~~~


	4. Beyond the Palings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The month is drawing to a close. John must decide. 
> 
> Excerpt: Sherlock stood in shirtsleeves before the grand piano in the corner, swaying as he played his violin, his back to me. Sunlight slanted through the southern windows, throwing blues and violets over him, greens and golds at his feet.
> 
> “You have questions,” he said and raised his bow. His tone was cool; he did not turn around.

~~~~~~o0o~~~~~~

There was a draft.

I pulled the covers up to my chin and wiggled deeper into the soft comfort of the bed.

There was a ruffling of feathers.

I opened an eye.

Perched upon the top rail of the footboard of my bed was the peregrine. She turned her head and studied me.

I opened my other eye and studied her back.

In the daylight, I could distinguish her colours: the blue-grey of her upper feathers, the blush on the pale breast feathers and the intense yellow about her eyes, at the root of her beak and the full length of her clawed feet. She sidled along the rail, the curl of her talons grasping it securely.

“Thank you for telling Sherlock where I was last night, Siròc,” I said, feeling only mildly ridiculous.

_Politeness is never amiss._

She opened her wings briefly at the sound of her name or perhaps just at the sound of my voice.

“I might have been impaled on a tree branch this morning rather than comfortable in my bed,” I added. 

_May as well go all out._

She turned her head and considered me afresh.

The door opened.

“I thought I heard you talking in here,” Mrs Hudson said, setting down a tea tray on the desk.

 _From the kitchen?_

She placed a cup of tea and a small vase with a flower on my night table. “That’s the first daffodil from the courtyard,” she said. “Very early for them.”

I eased into a sitting position. I seemed not the worse for wear.

Siròc spread her wings again.

“Tell Sherlock John’s up,” Mrs Hudson said to the bird as she returned to the desk. She held out a tiny bowl.

The falcon plucked the strip of meat from the dish and flew to the end of the curtain rail above the balcony doors to eat it. Snack consumed, she darted out the tilted pane of stained glass over the doors.

“That must be too cold for you,” Mrs Hudson said and pulled something behind the curtains. The pane of glass rotated back into place.

“You must be famished,” she declared, turning back to me. She brought a plate of fruit and another of biscuits from the tray. “This should tide you over until you’re ready to come down to the study. You can have a proper breakfast there, unless you’d prefer luncheon.”

I glanced out the doors again. The sky was a bright white and gave no clue as to the slant of the sun. “Slept late, have I?” I asked, setting the tea cup aside and taking the plate of biscuits. A few days and I was already addicted to her baking.

“Slept round the clock and half-way round again. It’s Thursday,” she said with a laugh. “Breakfast or luncheon?”

I was amazed. And starving.

“Breakfast,” I replied, “with everything!” Usually it took two, three days of being on-call or being shot to knock me out like that.

Mrs Hudson beamed. “Mrs Turner will be so pleased. She’s been wanting to show off her crêpes for you…but a good fry-up first, I think,” she said, tapping a finger against her cheek and considering me.

_Seems to be the order of the day._

I nodded. Mrs Hudson took it as a confirmation of the breakfast menu.

“You still look peaky, dear. Stepping through will do that when you’re not used to it,” she concluded and exited briskly.

_Clearly, a woman on a mission._

I finished the biscuits, plate carefully under my chin then the tea then the fruit almost without pausing for breath. I got up and made myself another cup of tea, wished there was more food and wondered if “stepping through” was what I thought it was.

_Shower fast, Watson. Need more food._

“Thinking will be clearer after both,” I murmured, rubbing my chin. There was two days’ worth of stubble there. I drained my cup and peeked into the teapot in hopes that there would be enough for another cup. There was not. I replaced the delicate china top and noticed my hand. The scratch from the thorns was nearly gone.

*** 

My feet barely touched the stairs, so rapid was my descent. I started to smile as I pushed the half open door wide. I could smell the wood burning, hear the fire crackling.

The room was empty. The table was set for one.

Despite the fire and my cardigan, I shivered. I rushed to the lab. 

The lights were bright, the centrifuge whirred on its own. The desk chairs were gone, the lab table had been tidied. I shoved up my sleeves. The tiny scab at my cubital fossa was reassuring. The centrifuge clicked off, its hum ticking to a stop. I inhaled, checked the supply cupboard. My view of the shelves of shining glass was unobstructed. I blew out the breath I had been holding and returned to the library at a more moderate pace.

_He is an elusive one._

“Yes,” I sighed.

A thread of music reached my ears. I looked up, stared at the far wall.

I bounded across the room, hopping over an ottoman or two. 

_Like a boy, Watson, or a puppy._

My heart thudded, my respiration came fast. I knew this feeling and thought I would never know it again. “Does one get a second chance?” I whispered beside a bookcase that was out of alignment by a centimetre or so. “Drop your clues, play your game as long as you’re inviting me to play, too.” I insinuated my fingers into the crack and widened it. Through the gap, a melody half strange and half familiar issued, trembling along a violin’s highest notes. I eased the bookcase open wider. Blackness greeted me.

_It may be more dangerous than a game._

When has danger ever deterred me? As long as I am invited, I do not care.

The air inside the passage was colder than before, the draft coming from my right, damper. Shoulder to the left wall, I hurried along, darkness be damned.

_You should have reached the other door by now._

I should have. The number of steps I had taken were far more than had been necessary on my previous journeys.

_Did you turn into that other corridor?_

Not unless the wall is a Moebius strip. I haven’t taken my shoulder from the wood.

I kept walking.

The music stopped.

I halted, my breathing oddly loud. I looked back. The bookcase had shut. I wet my lips and whistled a fragment of the tune.

The violin resumed. A line of violet light appeared ahead.

I walked faster, eased my fingers into the lavender light and pushed the wall open far enough to peek into the room. 

Sherlock stood in shirtsleeves before the grand piano in the corner, swaying as he played, his back to me. Sunlight slanted through the southern windows, throwing blues and violets over him, greens and golds at his feet.

“You have questions,” he said and raised his bow. His tone was cool; he did not turn around.

_And yet this room is full._

Oh, yes, it is. 

I sighed out a long breath; I have found you. I slipped into the room. I could smell the lavender.

“May I examine your injuries?” I asked.

He faced me then, violin in one hand, bow held high in the other, like a riding crop. 

A vision came of him riding a stallion hell-for-leather down a steep slope, reins gathered in one hand, riding crop raised in the other…or was it a sword? What he held high caught the sunlight. 

He stared at me.

_Can he see what you see?_

I don’t know.

I blinked the image away and walked closer to him.

“And when you have assured yourself that I am well?” he enquired.

Then I would like to test the smoothness of your skin with the tip of my tongue. I was grateful that those words did not escape me and hoped he could not see the mental picture that had accompanied them. 

“Then I would like to know how you communicate with the falcon,” I said. 

He lowered his bow hand and laughed.

It was a lovely sight and a lovelier sound. My shoulders relaxed; I smiled and then I grinned.

“Of all the things you saw last night, that’s the one you want to ask about first?” he said, the lines about his eyes crinkling in mirth.

“If I might,” I said, “but after the examination.”

He held his arms out to his sides. “Yes, Doctor,” he said and moved no further.

“Your shirt will need to be removed,” I remarked, my fingers curling against my palms. The urge to touch him grew stronger the closer I came, but the need to see that he was indeed well-healed was stronger.

“You may,” he said, but did not move. 

_Steady, Watson._

It was good advice. 

I reached out for the bow, held it carefully in both my hands and set it in its niche in the violin case atop the piano. 

He remained still.

I walked to his other side and placed my hands so they would support the violin as I might an infant. He loosened his fingers and I eased the instrument away, laid it to rest in the case as well. 

I turned to look at him. The position of his arms expanded his chest. It strained at the buttons of his tapered shirt, cut to fit his fine lines. He was like a piece of art, a dancer holding an elegant pose before a leap or a spin. I wasn’t sure I could bring myself to touch him, so perfect he seemed in himself, as he was.

“Doctor,” he said, looking straight ahead.

I cleared my throat. “Yes,” I said and raised my hands to undo the cuff of the wrist nearest me. He was holding his arms palm up and the sleeve drooped from his forearm revealing the tender skin of the underside and the blue tracery of his veins. I could see no wounds there. 

I retraced my steps to his other side and undid that cuff. The skin I could see was likewise unmarred.

And then I stood before him and finished undoing the shirt’s buttons, tugging the soft cloth from the confines of his trousers waistband and opening the buttons on the tails. I took a steadying breath and spread the halves of the shirt apart. I saw not a scratch. I shifted to allow the coloured light to fall directly on his skin; it was not ideal for a medical exam, but the wounds I had glimpsed would not have required strong light to observe. 

Perhaps nothing I recalled from the laboratory had actually occurred. 

The memory of the pain came back to me.

I lifted the shirt higher, searching for the bite at the side. I had seen the faint outline of it on myself when I showered. On him, it was a ruddier pink.

I stepped back. “I need to see your back,” I said.

He remained gazing into the distance, but he lowered his arms partway and bent them backwards. 

It was an odd response, dropping his arms to his sides was what I had expected him to do so that I could remove the shirt completely. The position reminded me of a bird shaking water from its wings and I found myself waiting for him to waggle his fingers to cast off the final drops.

“And now do you wish to leave?” he asked. “You will have fine tales to dine out on.”

_As if you do much of that._

“I have no wish to leave unless you want me to,” I replied.

His arms dropped to his sides then and I saw the knots of muscles in his shoulders smooth out. The extra bones were less obvious in that position and I realised that his unusual stance had been to help me see them.

“Do you want me to leave?” I asked. The room grew darker and a pain ran up my leg that I had not felt in a week. My hand shot out for balance and my palm met his back. A wave of displeasure for having asked that question washed over me. I wondered what particular thing I had done that had caused me to fail or if it was the aggregate of everything. Perhaps he desired a more compliant doctor or a less inquisitive one. I had not wished to fail, but I was not going to let him go uncared for either.

“I wish for you to stay, John Watson,” he said, “and I should like to examine how you have healed as well. If you would kindly remove your garments.”

I did not move; it seemed I could not. I simply closed my eyes and inhaled the fragrance of him.

He turned, his hands out to catch my elbows. 

I opened my eyes and looked up at him, grateful for his grip on my arms.

“Shall I remove them for you?” he asked and I nodded.

His fingers were fast and once I was disrobed, he prowled around me with narrowed eyes, then he moved nearer and explored with his fingertips, leaning so close I could feel his breath on my skin. He paused at my side, his hand pressed to the pink outline of the bite. 

“Hydra prefer to bite their prey here,” he said and curved his other hand around the back of my neck. “In the right place, their long fangs will paralyse the creature they have caught, then they shake it to snap the spine. They hunt quarry smaller than me and usually in salt water. It was strange to find one so far upriver and on the shore. Perhaps I took him by surprise as well.” He rubbed over the tender skin on my flank. “Before I lopped off the last of his heads, he took quite a chunk out of me and by extension, out of you. You’ve healed quickly, considering.”

“Seven against one,” I said. “I wish I had been there to help.”

"Yes," he said, tilting his head and squinting at me. “We must practice with the swords, but we need to feed you first. Your blood sugar is dropping.” 

“A meal would not be amiss,” I replied and nearly smiled. “Wouldn’t a gun have been more efficient?”

He snatched up our clothing and, keeping a hand on one of my elbows, led me to the panel that opened into the passageway. 

“Firearms do not work all the time,” he said as the panel swung open. “More than six hundred years back and it has to be a bow or a pike or a blade.” After a few steps, he stopped. There was a sharp click and the wall gave way to a view of the library. It felt like returning home.

*** 

One of the laboratory doors slammed into the side of a bookcase. 

I looked up from my research. 

Sherlock stood in the doorway. “Get your harp,” he said, “I’m going to show you something else music can do.” He strode towards the far side of the room without another glance at me. 

What had brought on this change in activity, I did not know. I pushed back my chair and secured the harp from my room with all due speed.

The library wall looked closed when I returned, but I was confident now that I could find the correct book even in the dark if needs be. 

The bookcase unlocked. My harp, in its case, was slung behind me. I slipped into the darkness, left shoulder to the wall as had become my habit, my right hand on the hilt of the dagger Sherlock had given me after our first fencing lesson. 

A week had passed since that afternoon when he had said he wanted me to stay and no call for assistance had taken either him alone or the pair of us from the Manor. There had finally been time for him to show me much more of the Manor in between our fencing and music lessons, the long hours in the laboratory and library and one very satisfying target practice session deep below the house. I had hit the bull’s eye on the first shot and every one thereafter, no matter how distant he had made it until the limit of the range had been reached. He had been impressed and I had been delighted. I smiled to think of it.

My shoulder bumped into a door frame in the dark and I knew I had reached the music room wall. It always took me longer to cross the passageway when I was alone, just as there were always more flights of stairs to the roof when I went by myself. 

_It is his home._

Exactly.

I located the latch and found him leafing through a large volume open on the music rack of the piano.

“Try this one,” he said, tapping the page in front of him. “It is simple and useful.”

Simple was good. Daily lessons with Mrs Hudson and an hour or so of practice in the music room or up on the roof had brought back most of the rudimentary skills I had once possessed for making a pleasant sound on the strings of a harp, but it would take much more time for me to be able to tackle anything more than a simple tune.

I looked at the page which Sherlock indicated and whistled softly. “That is a beautiful thing,” I said. There was a thick border of flowering vines painted in brilliant reds, blues and greens outlined in gold inside of which a large, blue capital O framed a miniature painting of an open window in a castle tower. “What’s it the opening to?” I asked, for such was the title over the few bars of square notes on the page. I was afraid even to turn the page and see what followed because of the obvious age of the book.

Sherlock turned to me and smiled. “Did you close the panel when you came in?” he asked.

“I did,” I replied.

“Excellent,” he said and sat himself with his violin case on the seat beneath the window of one of the dancing ladies. He kicked off his shoes, put his feet up and began rosining his bow.

“Take your time,” he said, ignoring my question.

I took out the tuning key and unwrapped my harp. I had taken to thinking of it as mine, although, of course, it was not. I lay the cover aside and tested the strings. Mostly, they were in tune. I settled on the piano bench and stared intently at the widely-spaced notes and began to pluck. When I reached the final note, I heard a distinct click. My head snapped about. I peered at all the exits of which I knew, but saw nothing amiss.

“Play it a couple more times,” Sherlock said.

I did.

When I looked around again, the panel to the passageway was wide open. I glanced behind me. Sherlock did not appear to have moved, but I had been concentrating hard on plucking the right notes, so he could have walked across the room and back again without my noticing, I supposed.

“Bit chilly,” he said. “Why don’t you close that.”

I carried the harp with me across the room and pushed the panel flush with the wall.

“Make sure it latches. The draft through there is strong,” he said.

That was certainly true. I listened for the snick of the latch. Satisfied that a draft could not push the panel open again, I returned to the piano bench.

“Play it through again,” Sherlock said, “a little faster this time.”

I set to plucking. I could not go much faster than I had before, but the melody flowed more pleasantly. I heard a definite click at the end of the tune.

I stared at the wall. I could not perceive any change and did not feel like getting up to check.

“Twice again,” Sherlock said, “without pausing.”

I complied. As simple as the tune was, it was a pretty little air that sounded sweet as I repeated it with more assurance. I was smiling at the end of it, then I shivered a bit and turned to the wall. The panel was wide open again.

“Play it in reverse,” Sherlock said, “three times through.”

Reversing the order was not easy for me, but at a distinctly more stately pace, I managed it three times. I heard a click and shifted my eyes to the side. The wall was smoothly closed.

I swivelled around on the bench and stared at Sherlock. He lifted his violin to his shoulder and played the melody with some variations. The music flowed like a stream as he played. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement. The panel in the wall opened a little, then more, then all the way, after which it closed a bit, opened again, closed more and more and then the latch clicked.

I gaped at the door and then at Sherlock. He smiled at me. “Want to try it again?” he asked.

*** 

Mrs Hudson tapped on the half-closed library door. “Woo-hoo,” she called as she came in. “Sherlock, what have you done with your phone?”

“I left it in the lab, I think,” he said from where he leaned over my shoulder, reading the notes I was typing up on my research.

He had taken to doing that, never asking for my laptop or my notebook, always leaning over me smelling like a garden and radiating warmth by my cheek.

“I’m busy with John,” he said, “I don’t want to be disturbed.”

“Well, Inspector Lestrade is downstairs again. He said it’s a special case,” Mrs Hudson said.

“Oh,” Sherlock said, standing up behind me. “Ask him to come up then.”

Mrs Hudson tutted and went down the stairs.

“John,” he said.

I could hear the excitement in his voice.

“This may prove very interesting. Are you ready for an outing?”

“Yes,” I replied, thrilled that I was going to be asked to come along. Considering what had happened the last time he had gone off on his own, I was not keen to have him do so again and I had become accustomed to his presence. Even an hour awake without him was an unpleasant prospect. The nights were bad enough, but I was not really without him then as there had not been a night when I had not dreamt of him. 

I twisted about to ask for more detail, but he had already twirled away. I watched him dash into the laboratory and return with his mobile, apparently reading the messages Lestrade had been sending him that he had missed.

“Oh, this is likely to be instructional,” he said, just as Lestrade came in the door.

*** 

The sky was growing pale in the east when we returned to Baker Street.

“What did you think?” Sherlock asked once we had closed the door behind us.

I stopped half-way up the stairs as though I could not walk and consider my answer at the same time. 

Sherlock tugged at my sleeve and I took another step.

“I had no idea,” I said.

“Well, you wouldn’t,” he said from the landing.

I suppose I looked hurt when I glanced up at him.

“Don’t look like that,” he said. “Who would?” He came down a couple steps and grabbed my arm. “Actually, you might have,” he said, “but I think you would have doubted your senses at the time or convinced yourself you had not remembered it aright later.” He tugged me up the stairs and into the library. “Have you ever done that?”

I thought of walking along the locked iron fence of Hyde Park one night and understanding the wind as it swept through the branches. It had told me my father had died and I had taken out my mobile. Half a block later the screen had lit up and my mother was telling me the police had been. The motor accident my father’s drunk driving had been courting for years had finally happened. “No one else was hurt,” she had said quietly. “He hit a tree.”

“I see you have,” Sherlock said, giving me a gentle push into my chair by the hearth. He lit the fire without even bending over.

There had been other times, when the dark was too dark. Like the night I made Harry stay at my hall of residence because everything felt wrong when I had walked her down to the door. Harry had looked at my face and hadn’t argued, which was quite unlike Harry.

There was the scorching afternoon I had hunched over the wounded soldier I was tending and the bullet had hit my shoulder rather than my head.

“Yes,” I said. “There have been times.”

Sherlock was lifting lids and revealing plates of cold beef and cheese, tomatoes and onions and small loaves of bread. “Eat, John,” he said. “I don’t think tonight’s case was an isolated incident. We saved Ms Dunbar, but I believe there will be others.” He tapped the top bookshelf next to the fireplace. “Tomorrow, I should like you to begin reviewing these. Skim until you find the deviations from the familiar medical symptoms. It may prove useful to us in the coming weeks.”

I stood to have a look at the titles and he waved me back down. “Leave it for tomorrow. Refresh yourself now. You may need your strength.”

*** 

He was gone in the morning. 

It was just as well that Mrs Hudson was not in the room when I saw the note leaning against the stack of books on the table in the library because I swore more than a little. There was reading to do, songs to learn, archery to practice and a promise that he would be back in four days with more information for us to sift through.

He came back in two with a dead speckled snake in a box. He dissected it and analysed the venom. Then he synthesised and concentrated it. 

He listened to the song I had learned that shrouded me in shadow. I had not realised what it did until Mrs Hudson came into the music room calling for me and went back out again without speaking to me. I whistled it in front of the mirror in my bedroom and understood. Sherlock was amused when I showed him that it worked equally well when I whistled it.

“Good,” he said and smiled. He looked tired and said he was going to sleep.

I was not surprised when I found another note the next afternoon. Three days this time. I growled.

*** 

I had not been sleeping well. When I started to dream, I would awaken. I was mad that he had left me behind again. Perhaps I was not ready to go along, but I was still angry and so I deprived myself of the feeling of his arms around me at night. Wherever he was, he was thinking of me. At least that was what I thought the dreams meant. Maybe they only meant that I was thinking of him. 

Mike had texted. He had no classes in the afternoon and suggested lunch.

I stared out the front door. The sun was bright. Cars and buses motored by. People passed along the pavement; a few glanced my way. I stood on the threshold; I could feel it pressing against my arches through the soles of my shoes. There were people eating at the tables outside Speedy’s. Whatever they were having smelled good. I held the phone in my hand and wondered if I whistled whether people would stop seeing me. Could that work out here in the sunshine?

“Oh, John, there you are,” Mrs Hudson said. She came and stood next to me, leaning up against the door. “Lovely day for an outing.”

My eyes went wide. I turned to stare at her.

_A test?_

My heart started to pound.

I don’t know.

“Mike…Doctor Stamford wanted to get together for lunch. He’s free this afternoon,” I said.

“Speedy’s does a nice lunch,” she said. “Nothing fancy, but nice. You could probably reserve one of the outside tables if you asked Mr Chatterjee now.”

“Who?”

She shook her head. “I can’t believe I haven’t introduced you yet. He runs Speedy’s. He’s our tenant, you know.”

It was my turn to shake my head. “I didn’t know,” I replied.

“Yes, Speedy’s is part of the Manor,” she said.

_She knows you’re not to leave._

Maybe.

She pointed to the iron palings by the steps. “You see where the fence is? That’s the edge of the Manor land these days. On the surface anyway. The cellars go out under the road and below the basement level of the buildings on the other side. They’re quite the labyrinth, they are. Best not to try exploring those on your own.”

“What about the Tube?” I asked.

“Oh, there was some arrangement when they built that,” Mrs Hudson said. “When it was new, there was a private platform under the house. That was part of the agreement, but that hasn’t been used in an hundred years, I think. The tunnel and the tracks are still there though.”

If I had not seen the things I had, I might have thought she was taking the piss, but since I had, nothing struck me as impossible.

“Mention it to Sherlock when he’s back,” she said. “He used to get up to all sorts of mischief down there when he was a boy and come back covered head to toe with soot. My grandmother used to write to complain of it, but she didn't really mind. She rather doted on him.”

I had to smile picturing that.

“So, let me take you over to meet Mr Chatterjee,” she said and slipped past me.

My smile disappeared. I imagined walking forward a few paces and turning back to find Mrs Hudson gone, the door closed and locked, and no answer when I knocked.

“I’d rather not,” I said.

She looked at me for a moment and tapped her cheek. “You know there’s another way in through the kitchen courtyard. Mr Chatterjee won’t mind. I often go round that way if I want a few pastries when Mrs Turner’s on holiday and I haven’t had time to bake.” She slipped by me again, back into the hall, and motioned me to follow. “Come along. After you’ve reserved the table, you can text Doctor Stamford and have a good chat over lunch.”

I came in and shut the door.

She bustled down the hall. “It can get lonely without Sherlock around,” she said, opening the glass door and hurrying through. “He takes some of the air away with him when he goes.”

We reserved a table inside.

*** 

“So how’s it going?” Mike enquired, as he draped his raincoat over the empty chair next to him.

“Great,” I said, “much better than I thought it would actually.”

“Not too eccentric?” he asked.

I smiled. “I had been worried I would be bored after Afghanistan, you know, but it’s not a problem.”

“Good, good,” Mike said.

Mr Chatterjee brought two bowls of steaming soup to the table.

“I ordered ahead,” I said, “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all. My tastes haven’t changed much over the years,” he said and took a taste. “Mm,” he hummed. “I’m happy so far.”

“Have you ever met him?” I asked.

“Who?” Mike replied.

“Sherlock,” I said.

“What does he look like?” Mike enquired.

“Tall, slim, dark curly hair,” I said.

“Well-dressed, piercing eyes?” Mike asked.

“Yes,” I answered and tried not to picture Sherlock because my appreciation would be bound to show on my face.

“I have, then,” Mike replied. “He came with Mrs Hudson on her first visit. Looked me up and down when I came into the consulting room, didn’t introduce himself, just turned to her and said, ‘He’ll do’, and left. I was too amazed to even ask her who he was. I’d assumed he was some relative, her son, maybe. He didn’t come again after that.”

“That’s definitely him,” I replied and could not suppress my smile.

“So do you think it’ll work out?” he asked.

“I won’t know until the end of the month, but I’ll get another month’s salary if either of us decide to call it quits,” I explained.

“That seems fair,” Mike said. “Do you think you’re going to call it quits?”

“I could try to save face and say I haven’t made my mind up yet, but I have. If he wants me to stay on, I am definitely agreeing,” I said, “so no matter how it works out, I wanted to thank you for the opportunity.”

Mike beamed. “That was quite the coincidence that day, wasn’t it?” he said and finished his soup. “So what’s next on the menu?”

*** 

The wind whistled past the edge of the roof, rattling the bare branches of the moonlit trees that stretched in every direction below us. I shoved my hands deeper in my pockets and looked up. The full moon held court in a sky wild with stars. It was not a sky one could see in a city, not a modern one anyway.

Beside me Sherlock was silent. He seemed to be listening or watching for something. I knew not what, but I felt the tension of it and I listened, too, and scanned the horizon and the dark reaches of the parapet on either side of us. We had been standing on it long enough for my toes to begin feeling numb, but I was not inclined to complain. Sherlock had returned from his latest foray relatively unscathed and he had not disappeared again yet.

I had started learning a melody that generated heat. I was wishing I had worked on it hard enough to have already committed it to memory when Sherlock spoke.

“It’s past midnight,” he said.

I looked up again. The moon was directly above us.

“Your month is over,” he continued.

Ah. How could I have forgotten the date?  


_February is a changeable month._

Calendars have become less relevant to me than they were in the past. I have undertaken journeys with destinations that have been when as much as where. I have seen a hydra with my own eyes and helped to slay it so that neither of us lost any flesh to the beast. I do not think the date upon which we slew it mattered, but there might be a significance to the time of death I did not yet understand.

The significance of the month of February having ended, however, I did know. This was what he had been waiting for.

I felt colder than before. I was not sure what he would say. I knew what I would say should he ask. I waited, looking out at the stars.

“I should be honoured if you would stay, John Hamish Watson,” he said.

The stone felt somewhat unsteady beneath my feet and I wanted to protest the use of my full name. I have never cared for it. Instead, I heard myself saying, “For how long?”

“As long as you wish, John,” he replied.

It was a relief to hear my name, the one that was just me, not linked to who sired me or who sired him. “I can choose my term?” I asked and wondered who this negotiator was that seemed to have taken charge of my tongue.

“You may choose your term,” he replied.

I did not know whether he looked at me, for I dared not look at him. “May I choose for as long as you will have me?” I asked.

He laughed. “We do go round and round, don’t we, John?”

“We go round and round one another,” I said and finally turned. Who would not wish to stay with him, I thought as I looked, and his outward form is but a shadow of what is within.

“We do,” he said and held up a key. “For you, so that you may come and go as you please.” He reached for my hand, placed the key in it and closed my fingers over it.

“I should not like to go far,” I said.

He smiled. “Good,” he said, “I like when you are near.”

*** 

I felt a draft, fumbled for the covers to pull them up. They would not move. One-eyed, I looked over my shoulder. The darkness curling over the foot of the bed was denser than the shadows in the rest of the room. The blankets pulled taut on either side of my legs. The hand on my shoulder was icy.

“Where the hell have you been?” I muttered.

“Rather the opposite,” Sherlock said. Even his breath was frigid by my ear. His weight settled on me.

“Get up and get under the covers, you wild thing,” I hissed.

“I’m very cold,” Sherlock said.

“Yes, that’s why I want you under here,” I replied, shifting my hip to dislodge him.

“I’ll make you cold,” he said, rolling off.

“I’ll make you hot,” I promised, my hand smoothing down his cold chest. “You’ve got nothing on. Get in here.” I sat up and pushed the covers off me. Goosebumps rose on my bare skin.

“Clothes needed to recuperate,” he said, not moving.

“And you?” I asked, my hands taking an exploratory survey of his torso and arms. I didn’t feel any injuries there, got up on my knees and explored lower.

“The clothes took the worst of it,” he said, finally sitting up.

“Did you catch something?” I asked, shifting my attention to his face and scalp.

“It sublimated on the way here,” he replied, pulling up his legs.

“Nothing left?” I asked. There was a scratch on his cheek. I heard him wince.

“Blood on the harpoon and a few brittle hairs on my coat,” he said, “I put them in the freezer and I disinfected that,” he said, brushing his fingertips across my hand, which was still at his cheek. He tugged at the covers and slipped his legs underneath them.

I could feel the cold radiating off him. “Frostbite?” I asked, feeling the tip of his nose and then his fingers. “Tingling?”

“No,” he said, “I don’t need a transfusion.” He slid further under the blankets. 

I burrowed beneath them and checked his toes, worked my way up his legs and found some warmth at the groin. I rubbed my cheek against his cock, closed my mouth about its tip. It was cool at first. I released it, crawled up his chest and pulled the covers over our heads.

“I hate it when you go alone,” I said.

“I would have preferred to have you with me,” he said, his limbs closing around my back and legs. 

I shivered.

“You would have enjoyed the aurorae, but you couldn’t have withstood the cold,” he explained.

I pressed my forehead against his neck, settling between his arm and his side, one leg across his thighs. Small patches of warmth were forming on him. I rubbed his other shoulder and arm, feeling the extra line of bone beneath his skin.

“Any chance of deposition?” I asked.

“I’m fairly sure it was only a body that I was trying to bring back, but I don’t know,” he said, his hands gliding down my back, over my buttocks and back up again, growing less cold with each pass.

I knew how he hated to admit to not knowing.

“We’ll have to keep an eye on the temperature next winter,” he said. His hands came to rest, one loosely cupping a buttock, the other tucked between my chest and his stomach. His breathing slowed.

I closed my hand around his shoulder, pulled his legs closer with mine, shut my eyes and listened to the echo of the word we.

~~~~~~o0o~~~~~~


	5. Addenda:  Baskerville and Chapalu

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John is no longer sequestered. Boundaries are crossed and creatures encountered. 
> 
> Excerpt: I stared for a moment at him and his beautiful proportions. He looked back at me, standing still as a statue with the water sluicing over him, except that statues do not grow red and purple bruises across their perfect skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter occurs before the final scene in _Chapter Four: Beyond the Palings_.
> 
> Many readers were kind enough to want to read more of John and Sherlock's adventures in this universe, which was a great encouragement to me to write up and expand a scene that I had not been able to fit into the earlier chapters. Thank you all!

~~~~~~oo0oo~~~~~~

A half moon hung among the clouds over Baker Street. I hoped they would keep in the rain until we returned, we being Baskerville and I.

He tugged me up the road by the lead that nominally indicated that I was taking him to the park for a run. I believe he viewed it as taking me for an outing. I cannot guess what the man whose face I saw pressed against an upper deck window on the night bus that whooshed past us made of our sortie. More grist for the Manor legends mill, I suppose. 

It was gone one in the morning and I had spent more than twelve hours in the library when Baskerville had nudged my hand with his lead in his mouth. Sherlock had not lifted his eyes from his microscope when I asked him if I should take the dog’s hint, but merely waved a hand at me, said Baskerville would show me where he preferred to exercise and that the key to the house worked for the gates to the park. All of them. 

And so we set out.

Mrs Hudson had left us to rendezvous in Bath with her sister, Lily, and her neice, Flora, for a holiday of sight-seeing for the younger generation and reminiscing for the older. Mrs Hudson had begun rehearsing her tales with me and by the time she departed I felt I knew more about her family than I did about my own. In her absence, Mrs Turner had served us one sumptuous meal after another, but Baskerville had had to remind whoever he could find that he needed his nightly constitutional. I was rather chuffed that after only four days, he had come to me. I chose to ignore the fact I had gleaned about Wiggins having been sent out of town. 

At the park fence, Baskerville stood with his front paws on the cross bars, wagging his tail while I pulled the chain as quietly as possible through the uprights of the two halves of the gates to get at the padlock that held it closed. I angled it to the light of a streetlamp and did not think the house key was a match at all, but when I touched the shaft of the key to the lock, it slipped in easily and turned equally so. The heavy lock dropped and one end of the chain fell to the ground. I looked anxiously from side to side, but the footpath remained empty as I pushed one side of the gate inwards. Baskerville jumped through the opening, dragging me by the lead I had looped about my wrist. I whistled and heard the gate clang shut as Baskerville galloped northwest along the lake and I ran behind him, waiting for an irate park constable to hove into view with each step. None did.

We rounded the children’s pond and sped over the Hanover Bridges, my breath coming more noisily with each stride, the lead slipping across my sweaty palm. I was thinking I should not have bothered with my jacket when Baskerville slowed to a trot and then a walk. We were in the open fields near the Hub and far from the gates, which I thought just as well. Finally, Baskerville stopped and sat and I caught up to him.

“Good dog,” I gasped, bending over and resting my hands on my knees to catch my breath. “How on earth does Mrs Hudson keep up with you?” I gulped down some more air. “Or do you not take her on such a run?” 

Tail thumping against the turf, Baskerville turned to look at me, mouth open, almost as though he were laughing. 

“She doesn’t keep you on a lead, does she?” I ventured to guess, straightening up enough to pat him on the back.

He woofed gently and tossed his head.

I looked across the huge stretch of moonlit grass. “If I take the lead off, will you come back to me when I whistle?” I asked, fervently wishing I had learned some tune to summon animals to my side.

He snuffled against my hand and licked it.

I unhooked the lead. “I hope that was a yes," I said and patted him on the head. "Have fun!"

He bounded out from beneath my hand towards the mound, circled around the quiet restaurant at the top and sped back to me.

“If that was a demonstration, I’m afraid I’m not up to the game,” I said, feeling a bit foolish for not having brought a ball or something that he might fetch. I had not thought to ask anyone, but I was beginning to think that despite his size, Baskerville was a rather young dog. I cast about for an alternative. The fragrant, newly-mown grass was free of windblown debris, but away to the left there was a small stand of trees and I hoped a dead branch might be found beneath them.

Baskerville looked in the same direction and ran ahead and round the clump of trees a couple times before I reached it. Searching in the shade beneath the branches was a slow process and Baskerville had galloped off again before I found what I wanted. I turned, waving the stick above my head for Baskerville to see.

He was up on the knoll, running around the restaurant’s patio and leaping periodically into the air. If he was chasing something, it was too small for me to see, but my gesticulating caught his eye and he came barrelling down the hill towards me. I was feeling pleased with myself for being able to afford the animal this simple pleasure when a shadow detached itself from a distant group of trees and loped across the ground on an intercept course with Baskerville.

I stared, arm still above my head. 

The shadow creature was too big to be any sort of dog or even wolf. It drew closer, running so fast its feet barely touched the ground. 

Baskerville appeared unaware, his attention fixed on me and the branch in my hand. On impulse, I had brought my gun, but hoped not to have to kill an animal that most likely had escaped from the zoo. However, I did not want it to eat Baskerville either. As frightening an apparition as he had been when I first saw him, I was in no doubt that he would be the loser in any contest with the creature heading towards us. 

I threw the stick in the direction opposite to the unknown animal and Baskerville swerved to follow it. Unfortunately, the other animal changed course as well.

I pulled my gun from my waistband. The animal leapt into the air as I was sighting, landed on Baskerville and the two rolled across the grass, a mass of indistinguishable black fur. 

I stood by, helpless, then the creature broke away, trotting back towards the trees from whence it had sprung with the branch in its mouth.

My eyebrows went up and my gun went down. I called urgently to Baskerville with an orderly retreat from this inexplicable scene in mind.

His response was to charge after the creature and leap upon its back.

“Where is your self-preservation?” I muttered, running towards them. Low growls and an occasional yip filled the air, but neither animal seemed to have injured the other enough to warrant a yowl of pain.

Suddenly, Baskerville jumped away from the beast with the stick clamped between his teeth.

_Great idea, the stick._

Christ, I was hoping you were asleep or something.

For an instant, the moon cast the other animal in silhouette before it streaked across the ground after Baskerville. 

_A lioness._

I took aim. Perhaps I could wound her.

_Wounded wild animal, Watson. Not a good idea._

She opened her jaws. Her fangs gleamed in the moonlight. She closed them on the edge of the branch and shook her head from side to side.

I heard the wood snap.

Both animals came to a halt, facing one another, with half a branch apiece in their mouths. They appeared to be at an impasse. 

Baskerville lowered his head and prowled to the left. 

The lioness turned her head, growling low around her stick.

_A tranquiliser gun would be a nice thing to have right now._

Yeah, it would.

_If it would work. Is it now?_

The restaurant’s a modern building.

_So the hypothetical tranquiliser gun would work._

Ho ho.

The animals continued to circle.

_Call Holmes._

I patted my pockets. No mobile.

_Gun, but no mobile. What might that say about you?_

That I was already sleepy when I set out on this expedition and forgot I had put it to charge.

Baskerville rammed into the side of the lioness.

She rolled over, branch clamped in her jaws, limbs clamped around Baskerville.

Baskerville rubbed his head against the underside of her jaw and dropped his stick.

The lioness loosened her grip on the dog.

He bounded a few metres away and turned, tail wagging.

The lioness rolled back onto her feet, shook her head and let the branch in her mouth fly. Baskerville hurtled after it and brought it back, laying it at the lioness's feet. She tossed it again.

_Are they playing?_

“Maybe?” I murmured, clicking the safety into place and lowering my gun.

_Escapee from the zoo or the Manor’s outdoor cat?_

I shook my head and wished I had not forgotten my mobile.

Baskerville had brought what was left of the branch back several times when the lioness stretched out on the ground. Baskerville dropped the stick by her head and nudged her shoulder with his nose.

A mighty paw came down on his back.

Baskerville lay down and the lioness licked his head and his face. Baskerville’s tail started to thump the ground.

_My money’s on Cat of the Manor._

Yeah, mine, too.

I sat down on the grass and watched the lioness groom the dog. It was strange seeing Baskerville look…like a puppy.

_Couldn’t be._

Animals adopt orphans sometimes.

_Maybe Sherlock should have mentioned Mama might be out in the park._

Perhaps she isn’t usually here.

_Defending him?_

“Always,” I whispered, “from danger and the jagged edge of doubt.”

_Where did that come from?_

I don’t know.

But I felt it with an intensity that startled me. 

I watched the improbable animals snuggling a few metres from me and the heat of my declaration dissipated, but not the anxiety that my doubt could pose a threat to Sherlock. 

A shadow glided through the moonlight. I glanced up into a whirl of feathers. 

Siròc landed on my shoe and dropped my phone between my legs. She fixed an eye on me from her perch then fluttered towards Baskerville.

The screen lit up.

> Come home. Lestrade’s waiting for us. There’s been another one. Near the Tower this time. SH 

I checked on Baskerville. Siròc was walking along the lioness’s back, half opening and closing her wings. Perhaps it was a signal of hers. Sherlock had never answered my question about how he communicated with her and I had forgotten to ask again.

_You do that often._

Rather a lot going on.

> Baskerville met up with a lioness friend. Not from the zoo, I’m guessing. 

The answer was almost immediate.

> Definitely not and Chapalu is closer to a tiger than a lion. 

Siròc launched herself into the air. The tigress and Baskerville got to their feet, gave me a look and started walking towards the bridges.

> We’re on our way.

I made no attempt to catch up to them and put on the lead. It would have been more than ridiculous as they were leading the way and I sensed that Chapalu might object. Baskerville was walking half a step behind her, bumping into her side every now and again.

I whistled at the gate when we drew near. As it swung open, chain hanging down and dragging along the asphalt, I noticed the padlock on the ground. It had not occurred to me that my spell did not include locking and unlocking, merely opening and closing. 

_Novice._

Yup.

I locked the gate properly and I hoped no one had taken advantage of its being unlocked for nearly an hour. 

Meanwhile, my guides had already crossed the road and were rounding the corner.

The moon was sinking behind the rooftops as we paraded down Baker Street. There was no one else on the footpath and only two taxis passed us with their lights off. I hoped their passengers were too occupied to stare out the window and that the cabbies had had their eyes on the road.

_Much hoping tonight._

Not much else I can do, is there?

We were nearly home when I realised it would have been a good time to whistle the obscuring tune. I tried it while I was unlocking the door. It may have been worth the effort as another night bus rumbled by.

The door opened on the gloom of the foyer. Against my thigh, I felt the rippling muscles of a powerful shoulder as Chapalu slipped past me. She veered sharply right. Baskerville whined at the mirror into which she had disappeared. I stared at the mighty trunks of trees between which she weaved until a low-lying mist had obscured her form and only the reflection of my wondering face and Baskerville’s mournful one remained.

*** 

With gentle tugs on his collar and promises of food and water, I lured Baskerville to the kitchens.

Shortly after becoming a permanent resident of the Manor, I had discovered that there was more than one kitchen. There was a cool one for whipping cream, decorating cakes and making salads, a hot one for roasting meats and baking pies and a temperate one for preparing vegetables and arranging the food to be served. My introduction to them was accompanied by Mrs Hudson's stories of the lavish entertainments Sherlock's parents had hosted before they had chosen to spend most of their time travelling once the children were grown. There had been a sudden intake of breath at her use of the plural, but she had offered no further explanation and I had pretended not to have heard, emphasising instead my interest in a silver centerpiece that was being polished at the kitchen table and which bore a remarkable likeness to the tree fountain complete with amorous figures about the column rising from the middle of its basin. Mrs Hudson had not explained it either, except to say that it was for serving wine.

At a bacchanal, I had thought and had followed her as she hurried off to the pantries and larders that branched off the kitchens and on into vaults of china and crystal, embroidered linens and lace tablecloths, and more silver tableware. Beneath this labyrinth, she showed me deeper and deeper cellars for roots and apples, preserves, ciders, wines and firewood, although she bustled past a stout, closed door with a wave and the single word, apothecary. Altogether, the rooms she showed me formed quite their own kingdom.

I washed Baskerville's trough and filled it with kibble. The sounds of the preparations seemed to have distracted him from his melancholy and he addressed the food with gusto as I refreshed his water. It was a routine I had witnessed often enough in the kitchens. 

The frequency of my visits had not been motivated solely by the strong likelihood that someone would be present who was eager to feed me, but because the company to be found there was a solace during those hours when Sherlock withdrew to his room to finally sleep or was too engrossed in a problem to be troubled with eating. I was accustomed to the companionship of others; a lonely meal was an experience being invalided out of the army had revealed to me, but the rooms upstairs, when Sherlock was not awake in them had given me a new understanding of what feeling alone could mean. 

Also, it was in the kitchens, I had met the elusive others who dwelt in the Manor, consistently or occasionally, and who were, therefore, my patients. Billy and his nephew, Archie, who made the gardens grow, were often to be found there and eager to tell tales of their leafy domain, or in Archie's case, the latest botany or biology exam for which he was studying. Wiggins and members of the Irregulars would flit in and out between their errands and information gathering all over the city and sometimes beyond. They were less likely to share a story, obviously accustomed to silence and invisibility. Discretion was clearly their watchword and I was new. I would patch them up or prescribe a medicine or ointment if necessary when I encountered them, but they did not seek me out. Thus, day by day, the roster of my patients had grown. As well as sharing a meal and conducting an impromptu surgery, there was always history to be learned in the kitchens and they had many doors. I was still learning where they were and where they all went.

I dried my hands, left Baskerville in the kitchen with the door to the courtyard open and headed upstairs.

Sherlock met me half way. “We have a few things to collect on the way down,” he said and hurried past.

I executed an about face and trailed after him. “The li…tigress took her leave through the mirror in the foyer,” I said, conversationally, as Sherlock opened the door under the staircase. 

“She prefers to hunt then,” he said, sliding the ornate brass gate aside. “Bigger game, fewer humans in the way.”

I stepped into the cage of the old lift. I had ridden in it once before when Mrs Hudson had shown me the various cellars. Sherlock and I had taken the stairs around it to the firing range.

Sherlock slid the door shut and pulled a lever.

The cage descended through the spiral of stone steps.

“She brings Mrs Turner a deer or an elk, now and then,” Sherlock continued.

“The antlers in the library?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied. “From long before I was born.”

The cage slid past panelled walls then brick. “They look pre-historic,” I said.

Sherlock adjusted the lever. “Could be. Their bearers won't bother you, if you give them a wide berth during mating season.”

“Baskerville couldn’t follow her there,” I said.

“No,” Sherlock said, shaking his head. 

“It distressed him,” I remarked. 

The walls outside the cage had given way to pale, dressed stone.

“It was worse when he was a puppy. He would sit by the glass for hours. Used to upset Mrs Hudson terribly. She’d bring him special tidbits of food to entice him to come away, when he was old enough to eat them. He was a neonate, underweight and blind when I brought him home, so for a couple months we could just scoop him up and put him wherever we wanted him.” Sherlock said.

“From Baskerville?” I ventured.

Sherlock nodded. “His littermates had been stillborn. The whole lot deemed a disappointment to the team in charge of the breeding experiment. They were going to put him down.” He looked at the floor. “He was shivering on the long, metal table. I put him in my coat pocket.”

“Someone must have objected to that,” I said.

“Yes, but I had just solved a rather big problem for them and I said I wanted to dissect him. They did not want to deny me such a small thing,” Sherlock said, pushing the lever up. “They offered me another from the litter since their bodies had been frozen, but I said I preferred a fresh sample. They seemed satisfied with that.”

The lift came to a halt.

Sherlock opened the door onto a corridor of grey, rough-hewn stone lit by iron sconces that had been fitted with frosted glass and electrified. “I took a jug of milk with me from the canteen for the ride home and let him lick it off my fingers, wrapped up in my scarf on my lap.”

“Long ride,” I commented.

“You've been?” he asked, glancing at me before he turned down a fork in the hallway.

“No, but I know where it is,” I said. 

There had been talk of my being stationed there after my injury, but in the end a surgeon with an intermittent tremor had not been worth a staff position.

He stopped by a large oak door and turned narrowed eyes upon me.

I wondered if he could read all that from my expression or whether he had already accessed every shred of my military history. 

“When I reached Baker Street, I left him on the rug by the fire, swaddled in my scarf and sleeping. Chapalu came up from the kitchen with Mrs Hudson, sniffed him out and they both adopted him there and then,” Sherlock said, unlocking the door with a huge, black key.

“Did she have cubs then? Could she feed him?” I asked.

“No,” Sherlock said. “As far as I know, her last litter was when Mrs Hudson’s grandparents were children. Mrs Hudson handled most of the feedings and Chapalu took charge of homeostasis and grooming and when Baskerville got older, she taught him to hunt. I think she considers him to still be in training.”

I noticed the small, brass key that Sherlock tucked into his pocket.

“I had a hunch that might be their relationship when I watched them in the park, after I got past the fear that she was going to have Baskerville for supper," I said as the door swung open along a deep groove in the stone floor. “So why doesn't she want Baskerville to go to her hunting grounds with her?”

Sherlock's brows furrowed as he gazed at me. “Most creatures not born there cannot step through,” he explained.

“But I’ve been, well not through that mirror, but through other places,” I said.

Sherlock’s stare intensified then he smiled. “Yes,” he said, “and you didn’t put that on your resume either.” 

“The Manor isn’t on the other side,” I said, thinking aloud.

_Speedy’s wouldn’t do much business if it were._

“Some parts are,” Sherlock said, flicking his fingers at the bundle of bark and twigs in the iron holder by the door. “I think you already knew that, John.” He lifted the flaming torch from the brackets.

_Doesn’t explain the courtyard._

“Are some places here _and_ there?” I asked.

He gave me a half smile and stepped over the threshold, raising the torch as he went.

The dim interior gleamed with a thousand small reflections. 

Sherlock shut the door behind us and the torchlight grew brighter.

The vaulted ceilings felt as though they were pressing down upon me, although they were well above my head even where they joined the columns bristling with spears and pikes that supported them. I was not sure I could see the far wall, but along the nearer sections of the side walls I saw all manner of armaments suspended from metal brackets embedded in the stone. The dimensions of the room reminded me of where we fenced, although it would be a much more complicated matter to duel about so many pillars. “Are we beneath the ballroom?” I asked, following as Sherlock moved further into the room.

He stopped. “Well-spotted,” he said. “Its footprint is dedicated to movement, all the way up and all the way down.” His fingers fanned out towards the ceiling and the floor then he wedged the torch between two spears round the nearest column and stretched up for something mounted high on the wall. He turned back to me with it in his hands. 

My hands reached out for it without a thought. They itched to mould themselves around its tiller, feel its weight-in-hand. I hefted it. It was for me. I sighted along the bolt channel. I had seen modern cross-bows used, but never shot one myself, and yet my hands knew this elegant ancestor of theirs.

“Guns may not work tonight,” Sherlock said. He unhooked a quiver from the wall. “These should.” 

I took the quiver from him, my arm dropping with the weight of it. I drew out a bolt, slid the vane into the channel and glanced about the room.

“Use the door as a target,” Sherlock said from farther behind me than he had been.

I was about to say that I could barely see the door from where I stood when the oil lamps either side of the door ignited. 

“Better?” he asked.

He was at my shoulder. 

There was firelight in his eyes when I looked. 

By its locket, he held up a sword in its scabbard. “And this,” he said.

My eyes flicked to the sword and back to him. “I’ve barely scratched the surface,” I murmured.

There was that small upturn at one corner of his mouth. “Would you like to go deeper?” he asked.

My hand tightened on the crossbow and I leaned towards him. “God, yes,” I said.

His eyes dropped to my mouth.

I felt the tip of my tongue run over my lips.

“Show me how good your aim is.” His glance returned to my eyes. “With the bow,” he added softly, his eyes saying something more. 

The cool room grew warm. 

_Is he alluding to your boast in the dream?_

I could not look away. I wanted to show him, here in this deep, silent place.

The room brightened and a nutty smell rode on the glowing air. 

I looked past Sherlock’s shoulder then behind me. All the lamps along the walls were burning. They cast wavering shadows on the stone floor and made the swords glitter from a dozen angles. 

Sherlock had looked away when I glanced back at him.

“You have enough light now, John,” he said. “Show me.”

_Can you impress him with that thing, Watson?_

I can bloody well try.

I detached the hook dangling from the strap of the quiver and spanned the bowstring.

“What are we hunting?” I asked, raising the crossbow.

“I don’t know yet. As with the others, the victims had been in the water for a while, the photos Lestrade sent were from a distance and taken in poor light by the night watchman who noticed the remains. Not very helpful. What was left of the bodies have been found washed up on the foreshore of the river, so it may be something that swims or it could be the river was simply used to dispose of the remains,” Sherlock replied. His voice grew fainter; he was moving away.

I did not look back to see where, focussing instead on the centre of the door where the iron hinges did not reach. I wished to show him, give him further proof that he had not erred in retaining me, that it would not be a mistake to give me more. My arm was steady as I sighted between the feathers. 

The dark wood rippled like water. A shark-like creature skimmed below its surface, soundless and huge. I felt the thud of its impact shiver through our boat. Water sluiced from the hump of its silvery back as it turned to ram us again. I saw its empty eye. I aimed low. 

The grating sound of the bolt wedging itself between the stones of the floor startled me. A dark stain oozed up around its feathers, flowing along the cracks between the flags. I lowered the crossbow.

Sherlock’s hand was on my shoulder. “What did you see?” he asked.

“Just below the water,” I said, staring at the bolt. The stones either side of it were pulling away from the mortar, tilting upwards at the seam. “A dead…a deadly eye. I hit it there.” I shivered. “The wind is cold along the river.”

Sherlock pulled me round to face him, his hands sliding from my shoulders to either side of my face. “Anything else?” he asked, turning with me in a circle.

I closed my eyes. My lip curled, my nose wrinkled. “Stagnant water.”

He stopped turning. “Lift your arms,” he said. 

I did, opening my eyes. Sherlock was on one knee before me, buckling something about my hips. I looked down, avoiding staring directly at the rich darkness of his curls as he bent to his task. I checked what was bumping against my thigh. It was the scabbard and sword he had shown me earlier.

“There,” he said, rising to his full height once more and grabbing my elbow to swing me around. “Quickly now. I want to arrive before Lestrade does.”

I checked the floor as he steered me towards the door. The flags lay unstained and even, the bolt sticking out from the bottommost portion of the door.

I leaned towards it. 

“Leave it,” he said then stopped short. “No, return it to your quiver.”

He left me to it and I hummed at the place where the bolt had pierced the oak. The wood parted. When I stood, sliding the bolt into the quiver, he dropped a cloak over my shoulders. “Since it’s cold on the river,” he said, pivoting towards the column with the torch. He reclaimed it with one hand and grabbed a hooked spear from the assortment near it with the other.

Behind us, the lamps went out.

*** 

Sherlock raced before me, a streak of flame in the darkness.

I chased the afterimage. To do otherwise would be to be left in the dark.

He paused and I caught up with him at the top of a flight of stairs. He plunged downwards, I proceeded with care. The torchlight had provided a glimpse of steps with furrows worn smooth in the centre, their surface glistening with moisture. The temperature sank as we descended, the damp air surprisingly fresh.

When I reached the bottom, Sherlock already had one foot in the skiff bobbing at its moorings there. He continued as though he were simply walking along the stones and, once he was aboard, swayed gracefully in time with the water slapping at the stone landing. He held the torch higher then to light my way. 

I gathered up my cloak with one hand, gripped the domed top of the nearer of two bollards for balance and stepped cautiously after him. Even so, I landed more heavily on the wooden seat than I would have wished, the scabbard scraping the bottom of the boat and the crossbow and quiver thumping against my back. The skiff dipped and rebounded with my clumsiness.

_You're a soldier, not a sailor._

Quite right.

Sherlock thrust the torch at me and turned away, his cloak flaring about him.

Gold light obscured how we got underway, but I heard the thump of rope landing in the bottom of the skiff and felt it rock as Sherlock shoved us away from the landing. I held the torch aside, staring away from it and opening my eyes wide until they adjusted to the gloom.

To the accompaniment of a rhythmic, metallic ting and the occasional splash, we glided forward. "Are there fish in here?" I asked.

"Among other things," Sherlock replied.

I decided against dipping my hand in the water to test its temperature. We were floating beneath a pale stone arch when our surroundings came into focus. Sherlock was pulling us forward by means of the hook upon his spear and brass rings upon the walls. Their stones shone darkly in the torchlight. "Flint?" I asked.

"Yes," Sherlock replied. He had remained standing and was plying the spear hook with balletic grace on one side of the boat and then the other.

I peered over the side. We appeared to be moving against a current.

 _Another feature of the tales proving to be true?_

"Is it a river?" I asked.

"A spur of the Tyburn," Sherlock answered. "We can take it west sometime. There's bound to be mischief in that direction at some point."

"I thought that had been turned into a sewer," I said and it seemed a pity that that had been the fate of almost all of London's rivers.

"This is older," he said, "before there were too many people along its banks."

I let that settle into my mind.

"That's why it suits our journey tonight, rather than a taxi ride," he continued.

"Have we..." I began.

"Hold the torch flat out to the side and duck down," he interrupted, "low arch ahead."

I did what he directed, saw him crouch and hook the spear on something above our heads in an arch wrought of bricks. We slipped under and emerged on the other side into the night air.

It was very dark. The moon had set and between the clouds, I could see stars. I coughed.

"When are we?" I asked, holding the torch upright again.

_You feel clever asking that, don't you?_

I do and a bit thrilled, to be frank.

Sherlock stood and caught his spear on a hook embedded in a stone flight of steps next to the water. "Hold this," he said, passing me the shaft of the spear.

I grasped it tightly, feeling the pull of the current on the boat.

Sherlock sat and unshipped a pair of oars.

"I could help with that," I said.

He shook his head. "Just hold this," he directed, pushing one of the oars towards me and grasping the spear.

Without thinking, I grabbed the oar before it could swing away, leaving the spear dangling. My hand had barely left it when Sherlock seized it, unhooked it and pushed us away from the bank as we started to drift back towards the arch.

Sherlock dropped the spear into the boat and took back the oar I had been holding. He skimmed both oars through the water. We shot forward. 

"Somewhere else perhaps," he said, leaning forward. Another powerful stroke broke us to the centre of canal. 

Sherlock propelled the boat through the water with an economy of motion that was thrilling to behold.

Our torch was burning low. I adjusted my hold on it and lost my night vision again.

"I'll find us some moonlight," he said.

"The moon was setting when I came back from the park," I said. We were passing below the zoo as I spoke. Not a glimmer of light showed from our vantage and other than the hoot of an owl, no other animal called. I peered into the darkness. "I would have thought the towpath would have had some lights to mark the way."

"There should be lanterns on the bridges, for a while anyway." He lifted one oar out of the water and we turned slightly. 

"How..."

"Shh. I need to listen," he interrupted.

I closed my mouth and realised that he was navigating without looking in the direction we were travelling.

_Can he possibly know the watercourse that well?_

Little he can do surprises me.

"Douse the torch," he whispered.

The water hissed around the burnt wood. I pushed it deep so that no embers would remain to set the boat alight. I placed what was left of the torch on the bottom of the skiff and lowered my boot onto it to prevent it from rolling.

A drop of rain hit my face then another. I checked the sky; could not see a thing. Even Sherlock, half a metre away from me was hidden by the darkness. The rain began to patter on the wood of the boat. There was a faint ripple as Sherlock dipped the oars. Ahead of us, an orange light hung in the dark.

"Who goes there?" a gruff voice called.

Sherlock did not answer. We glided beneath the bridge. There was no further challenge. When I looked back, the light was gone.

The rain stopped. I could distinguish Sherlock's face, pale in the gloom when he leaned away, clearer when he bent closer. His eyes were in shadow, but his skin glowed. I looked up again. The stars blazed across the sky. I nearly exclaimed aloud, but pressed my hand against my mouth at the last instant. I glanced to either side. There were branches in full leaf arching over the water. We skimmed beneath them. I reached out and caught at one, ripped off the tip of a branch. The stars were bright enough for me to discern the shape of a willow leaf by their light. I scanned the heavens, looking for constellations I knew. I could barely restrain myself from whistling at the glory of it. When I glanced at Sherlock, I could see that his eyes were closed. Before us, there was fog floating above the water.

The light grew brighter still. I gazed upwards again and found a full moon beaming upon us.

"How?" I murmured and clapped my hand to my mouth.

"Duck," Sherlock whispered and the light disappeared.

The faint splashing of the oars echoed. I kept my head down. Sherlock's forehead almost touched mine as he leaned forward. As effortless as he made our journey seem, the fragrance of lavender was growing with each backstroke. 

The moonlight seemed as bright as day when we emerged from the tunnel.

Around us, leaves rustled. I could not see any sign that we were still on a canal.

Sherlock altered our direction. 

The moon beamed on my left, the water reflecting back its light and as far as I could see I found no trace of buildings or roads, just a shimmering basin of water.

I contemplated Sherlock's face. His head was tilted slightly to the side as though he were indeed listening.

An oar scraped lightly against a rough surface. We turned into a narrow channel. A ruddy glow revealed the outlines of a small wooden building by the water. We sped past it.

The moon cast my shadow over Sherlock. His silhouette seemed somewhat lower than mine. The boat rocked. I grabbed the gunwales and barely managed to keep my seat. Around us, the water opened up, a vast reach of silver and black. The oars splashed as we turned once more, moving fast. The tide was coming in and I no longer faced the direction in which we were going.

I saw nothing familiar behind us or to our sides. The water was rough and I did not care to risk losing my grip by twisting about to see where we were headed, but I suspected that we had reached the Thames. 

The moonlight lit half of Sherlock's face. His expression was intent, his eyes open. He seemed to be steering the boat, more than propelling it with the oars. I wished I could assist, but I estimated that my silence was the most I could contribute.

We rounded a spur of land. I could see that Sherlock's strokes were guiding us away from the shore that the tide sought to beach us upon. Dark shapes dotted the banks, throwing wavering shadows across the water. Whether they were natural or artificial features, I could not tell.

Sherlock leaned far forward, the crown of his head nearly touching my knees. 

I felt a bump and heard a scrape along the left side of the boat behind me. I pulled my hand into my lap. 

In one fluid movement, Sherlock landed the oars inside the skiff to either side of me and threw a loop of rope above my head and out over the water. Hand over hand, he drew most of the rope back in and the boat thumped along what I guessed was a pier. I twisted round to look at it. Our mooring line was holding us close to one in a double row of tree trunks extending back to the shore and up the bank.

"We have arrived in good time, I believe," he said and his voice betrayed only the slightest breathlessness. The skiff thus braced, he balanced an instant on the gunwale before stepping up onto the top of the mooring post. "Come, John," he said, "while we still have the moonlight."

I watched him stride from post to post as though they were so many stones in a brook and then jump down to the shore. He turned and waved me on before setting off at a run.

There was nothing for it, I found a stump of a branch on the tree trunk and using it as a foothold, achieved the top of the post. The water swirled below it. From my new position, I could see that the next post was not as far away as it had looked from the boat and the tree trunks wider, so I launched myself at the next one and kept going until there were pebbles beneath me instead of water. I hissed an expletive when I jumped down and the scabbard thwacked me soundly on the leg, the crossbow banging against my spine. I caught my breath, wished that we might have landed after construction of the pier had been completed and set off after Sherlock. 

I had nearly reached him when he began to softly sing a tune I knew well and faded into a patch of shadow. Past where he had been I could see further along the bank to where a stout stone tower rose from the corner of a stone platform. Firelight illuminated the base of the tower. I whistled as quietly as I could and hoped that I, too, could no longer be seen because two figures with torches rounded the tower and sauntered to the edge of the platform to scan the shoreline. The sound of the water made it difficult to be certain, but I thought they might be conversing.

I tilted my head to listen for the crunch of Sherlock's footsteps and when I heard them, followed as quietly as I could. 

He halted abruptly. "Here," he whispered as I bumped into his back.

I looked ahead and saw a one-legged torso upon the gravel. Half an arm was missing as well. I could hear Sherlock murmuring, but not catch his words.

The man's shirt was long and shredded, an old scar ran halfway down the inside of his bare leg, another marked his forearm. 

Although the cases had not yet been many, my having accompanied Sherlock when he had helped Lestrade with other _special_ matters, as they referred to them, was paying off as was my keeping detailed notes of everything I had observed and everything Sherlock had observed and the deductions to which they had led him. The gap between what I saw and what he did was large, but I felt it was diminishing with each new case. 

The body's remaining hand was clutched tight and I thought there was something clasped in it. 

Sherlock peered closely, lifted the shirt gently. He appeared to be waiting for Lestrade to arrive before making a more intrusive examination of the corpse, although perhaps he had seen enough to form a plan.

In the distance, the torchlight wavered when the figures turned their backs in our direction. Their receding lights showed a wall extending eastwards from the tower and a suggestion that there might be the foundations of another tower further along the wall. Their progress was leisurely; it appeared they had not heard our small noises nor noticed the body on the shingle. 

I walked to where Sherlock crouched a few paces from the headless corpse. There was an arm and a lower leg bearing obvious bite marks along their length and the white of bone at their ragged ends.

"The rest of that poor bloke," I whispered, hoping that the dismemberment had been post-mortem.

"No," Sherlock said and stood.

Blue lights flashed, banding the black water and colouring one of the feet of the deceased. Sherlock pulled me higher on the foreshore. Lights glowed along the southern shore and the growl of a bus brought my eyes to the familiar, floodlit bridge that spanned the river to the east. 

I heard voices.

"Down here with that. Get the body out of here before the tide takes it back," Lestrade ordered.

He was descending a ladder, slid over the last few rungs and hurried along the gravel to the torso. He stared for an instant and took out his phone. "Shit," he muttered, "answer me."

"Certainly, Detective Inspector," Sherlock said, humming and gathering form as he walked forward.

Lestrade's head whipped around. "How'd you get here so fast?" he said.

I whistled the same tune and followed directly behind Sherlock.

He gaped. "You are becoming a good assistant," he said to me. "You might have told me you were already in the area," he said to Sherlock.

"I was at home when you texted," Sherlock replied and glanced at the forensics team crunching across the gravel from the river stairs.

Lestrade held up a hand towards them. "Go wait by the steps," he said and waved them away.

They turned and crunched more slowly back.

"Then you couldn't have got here before me..." Lestrade narrowed his eyes. "...unless you...?"

"Yes, we came by water," Sherlock said, "it seemed the right medium for tonight."

Lestrade appeared to understand the significance of that.

"And so?" Lestrade coaxed.

"The reason you haven't been able to identify any of the bodies, much less apprehend their executioners, is that the victims did not die here," Sherlock said, walking about the leg and arm.

"Throwing bodies, or parts of them, into the river, is certainly an old trick, but we've had hands and teeth and not a single match of fingerprints or dental records," Lestrade said, leaning over the leg. "Or do you mean they were murdered at sea or not British?"

"No, their lives ended quite locally," Sherlock said, "but not now. That's why no record of them has survived, regardless of nationality, just like the others."

Lestrade looked up at Sherlock. "Even if someone had them frozen for decades, we should have found some record of at least one of them."

Sherlock shook his head. "Take a close look at that shirt, Lestrade, use my loupe, if you like."

Lestrade took the magnifier, walked to the headless torso, knelt by it and took a torch from his pocket. "Handwoven," he said. "Some people like that, very green." 

"Look more closely," Sherlock said. "It's hand spun as well. Note the pock marks on the chest. He's survived small pox and those small wounds near his groin are from a recent application of leeches."

Lestrade snapped the loupe back into its case and stood. "How far back did it take you?"

"They were building this," Sherlock said with a wave at the Tower. He nodded at the body. This one was beheaded and river did the rest, the limbs over there are from someone who was drawn and quartered before he was thrown in."

"Ah," Lestrade said, handing back the lens. "Even so, they should have been buried."

"Someone got lazy and dumped them in the river instead or someplace that empties into the river. They weren't caught and so kept doing it," Sherlock explained.

Lestrade walked over to the limbs and winced at the exposed shoulder joint. "All eight of them, then?"

"Redo the forensics, DNA testing, evidence of eradicated diseases, certain vitamin deficiencies, to be sure of course," Sherlock said. 

Lestrade looked up and nodded. "Not murders, but executions?"

"The evidence points in that direction," Sherlock replied. "The shirt was a helpful clue."

"So, why are they washing up now?" Lestrade asked.

"That puzzle is yet to be solved," Sherlock said, "and there may be another."

Lestrade raised an eyebrow.

"You see the lacerations on the limbs..." Sherlock asked.

"Yeah."

"Not man-made," Sherlock pointed out.

"You know what damage the wildlife inflicts," Lestrade said.

"What river creatures have teeth like that?" Sherlock asked, gesturing towards the leg.

Lestrade's gaze shifted to Sherlock. "Some ocean fish trying the hunting upstream? A shark, maybe?" Lestrade asked. 

"Who only likes the flavour of ancient Londoners?" Sherlock scoffed.

"You think something's followed them here?" Lestrade said. "But even a thousand years ago, there weren't sharks living in the Thames."

"Exactly."

"Something older?" Lestrade asked.

"Something that shouldn't be on this side at all," Sherlock said.

Lestrade raised his eyebrows and nodded thoughtfully.

There was a thrashing in the water and we all turned riverward.

"You can have them take the bodies away," Sherlock said, peering out over the water. "We need to go hunting, John," he announced and took off at a run towards where our boat had been.

I glanced at Lestrade before running after Sherlock.

He was already seated in the skiff, which bobbed in a few centimetres of water next to a stub of a post protruding from the shingle before the grassy slope leading up to the walkway in front of what had been Traitor's Gate. 

I was relieved I would not need to hop along a line of posts to board, remembering gratefully as I clambered in how the river had narrowed over the centuries. Behind me, I could hear Lestrade directing his team.

Sherlock dropped the rope back in the boat and shoved off from the post with the blunt side of the hook on the spear. The tide bumped us back against the wood. Sherlock twirled the spear about and thrust the pole into the gravel. The skiff skimmed over the water in defiance of the tide, catching a current rushing towards the opposite shore. With a small sound of satisfaction, Sherlock dropped the spear in the boat and grabbed the oars.

His strokes were long and powerful and he kept us in the centre of the river, turning the boat when the incoming tide carried us too far west. He was keeping us abreast of the Tower, the boat rocking with his manoeuvres. I clutched the gunwales to hold myself in place. I cast a glance at the roiling waters; they had gained a rusty hue.

I looked to the shore. Bathed in red light, Lestrade's team was hurrying towards the steps further along the shore with a stretcher between them. Lestrade was halfway up the ladder near where the bodies had lain when huge shadows began marching across the encrimsoned Tower walls. He turned towards the river, hand over his brow. 

Something cold slithered past my hand. It was on the hilt of my sword in an instant, sliding the blade from its sheath. An inky shadow reached into the boat, narrow and questing; its tip tilted upwards as though to scent the air. It curled towards Sherlock's leg. My sword hit the edge of the boat's side. Something heavy fell into the bottom of the boat; the water by its side foamed, redder now.

Sherlock shipped the oars and seized the spear. My stomach sank when I saw him stand, stance wide for balance in the rocking boat.

Two thick tentacles sprang from the water. One coiled about his spear, the thicker about his waist. I swung forward. The amputation was swift. The severed end hung limply from Sherlock's hips, the other end persisted in clinging to him while the whole tentacle continued to wrestle for the spear. I slashed at it, but only succeeded in knocking the spear from Sherlock's hand. The tentacle brandished the captured weapon in the air before aiming it downwards. 

Sherlock's sword swung upwards, slicing the limb from the body of whatever creature wielded it. With a thud, the limb and the spear dropped into the boat.

I dropped my sword against the seat, flung off my cloak and pulled the crossbow from my back.

There was a loud thump and an ominous crack. The hilt of my sword struck my foot as it fell. The boat shuddered, rising on a wave before splashing back into the water. It soaked all but my chest where I had pulled the quiver and crossbow close to me.

We rocked on the swells and the air grew brighter. I snapped my head from side to side. Both banks were lost in darkness, but over our heads a full moon shone amidst a sky full of stars.

I drew in a breath and loaded a bolt by their light. 

Sherlock stood, spear poised over the side that had been obviously the south bank when last I could see the land.

I swivelled on my seat until I had a leg either side of the bench and watched the northern side. 

The moon lit a ring of froth a couple metres from the skiff. 

I watched as it circled until Sherlock blocked my view of its progress then again as it appeared on the other side of him. It was swimming slowly and I hoped the loss of blood was incapacitating it. As if it heard my thoughts, the foamy circle formed more quickly, but further from the boat on its second lap. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sherlock turn to look over his shoulder at it.

The air grew icy. I shivered, feeling every centimetre of my sodden clothes and holding the bow more tightly.

The bubbles stopped mid-circuit.

I sighted along the bolt channel towards the spot where they had ceased. I felt the skiff rock very slightly as Sherlock turned to face in the same direction as me.

The impact lifted my side of the boat. I gripped with my knees, leaned up and over the gunwhale and saw that empty, deadly eye below me. I released the bolt. 

The opposite side of the boat rocked up. 

I saw Sherlock fall towards the water, spear poised.

He landed across the gunwale with a crack that I feared were his ribs. He drove the spear deep into whatever was beneath the water. It pulled him forward as he twisted and turned the harpoon, his legs clamped about the seat.

I loaded another bolt and shot a metre beyond where Sherlock had impaled the creature.

A gout of something dark spurted above the waves.

The boat shuddered with a series of thumps. 

I shot another bolt close to the last.

The thumps grew weaker. The boat began to tip in the opposite direction. Dark shadows were sliding over the gunwale behind Sherlock.

I slid along the bench towards that side, pulled my dagger from my belt and severed the nearest two. Two more curled about my forearm. Twisting about, I grabbed the knife with my other hand and pinned one to the wood. The other released my arm, rearing towards the hilt of the dagger. I switched hands and sliced it open as it waved. It slipped back into the water. I peered cautiously over the side to check whether anything else was slithering up the hull.

"John."

"Yes," I replied, not seeing any evidence of our adversary above the water. 

"Do you think you could row?" Sherlock asked.

I felt a great relief that he would not insist on rowing with what I feared were broken ribs, although I was not completely confident about how well I would manage the currents.

"I believe so," I said.

"Then help me shift to your bench."

I slid to the middle of my seat, retrieved the crossbow from the bilge on the bottom boards, slung it over my shoulder and reached under Sherlock's cloak to grab hold of his jacket.

He edged along the gunwale, retaining his grip on the harpoon with both hands. I could hear some portion of the beast sliding along the underside of the boat with him.

I tugged on his jacket to help him along. 

"I'm going to shift my legs now," he said.

One by one, I changed the places where my clutching hands held the fabric of his jacket and slid along the bench towards the other side of the skiff. The boat creaked as he shifted his weight.

A long leg stretched towards my seat. When the ankle was hooked over the far side, he pushed the rest of his lower body after it.

I only sustained a kick in the shin before he was settled on my bench, legs hooked beneath it. I released my grip on his coat and swung my leg over his back. No longer athwart the seat, I lowered myself into a crouch and eased myself onto the rowing bench. I let out a great sigh when I was firmly seated in the middle of it.

As carefully as I had shifted my weight, the boat rocked more with my movements than it had with Sherlock's.

He grunted, his shoulders twisting as he held firmly to the spear.

I slipped a bolt from my quiver into place, aimed to the side of where the harpoon pierced the creature and released the string.

Whatever part of the beast hit the bottom of the skiff then, it made the boat boom like a drum. The next impact was not as strong, but was followed by a scrabbling sound on the hull. 

I stared over the opposite gunwale, dagger in hand. Several tentacles groped for purchase above the waterline, but failed to find it. One by one, they fell back into the water.

"Row," Sherlock said.

I turned at the strain in his voice to find his shoulders hanging further over the gunwale.

"It's sinking," he added, angling the spear to keep the great fish hooked.

I found the mooring rope, shook off the oozing bits of sea creature hanging over it and tied Sherlock to his bench, before turning myself around on mine and unlocking the oars. Sherlock may have been able to navigate without looking in the direction he was going, but I was not. I swung us towards what I calculated was the north bank without hitting Sherlock in the head and found the current that wanted to throw us up onto the foreshore. 

The river seemed very wide and the breeze over it very cold. The moon was setting to my left when I spied a flickering light swinging well above the water line. 

Sherlock had been so quiet for so long, I had wondered whether he had fainted. Several times I had looked over my shoulder to check that he was indeed still there, despite the stoutness of the mooring rope and my faith in my skill at tying knots. Little but his hands around the harpoon had shown at first in the moonlight, but the third time I checked, he had turned his face towards me and opened his eyes as I looked. I had nodded at him and applied myself to the interminable rowing with renewed vigour.

The light grew brighter, which encouraged me further. The notion that it might be held by some hostile hand had crossed my mind until it had begun blinking the name Lestrade at me in Morse code.

"Stop," Sherlock said. 

I jumped at the sound of his voice.

"We're dragging it along the bottom," he said.

"Sherlock," Lestrade called, "John. Up here."

I squinted into the dark and thought I could see wooden posts.

"Is that a pier?" I asked.

"It would seem so," Sherlock replied. "Lestrade, have you a rope? Ours is fulfilling another purpose currently."

"Yeah," Lestrade said. "I've already nicked a lantern, may as well pinch a rope."

"Public necessity," Sherlock said.

"Private at least," Lestrade answered, throwing down a rope. "Not sure what jurisdiction we're under at the minute. How badly injured are you?"

"I'm not, I'm holding onto whatever we harpooned out in the river," Sherlock said.

"He may have some broken ribs," I said, catching the line and knotting it around the closer end of the rope securing Sherlock to the bench. "Guards at the Tower let the lights go out?"

"Tower's not there right now," Lestrade replied, pulling the boat closer by the line. "How's your Latin?"

"You're not joking?" I asked as I untied Sherlock.

"No, but the time has changed repeatedly since you rowed off. What were you doing out there?" Lestrade asked.

"Secure the harpoon to our rope before I move, John," Sherlock directed and I set to.

"The short answer is that we were killing the creature that attacked us, at least I think it's dead," Sherlock said, "and I think it is what has been chewing up the corpses floating onto our shores of late. When I get a good look at what I'm hanging onto, I may have some theories as to how this has been happening."

"And the long answer?" Lestrade asked.

"I don't wish to theorise too far ahead of the facts, but when we are once again in the land of internet databases, I suggest we check on the locations of recent excavations for large buildings or underground infrastructure or their repair and compare them with the locations of ancient water sources both here and _there_ ," Sherlock explained.

"All right," Lestrade said. "There are cross pieces nailed into the posts. If you'd like to climb up that is, rather than waiting for high tide down there."

"Secure," I said, letting go of the last knot I had tied.

Sherlock sat up with a grimace and began massaging his hands and his arms.

"We need to pull this beast ashore," he said. "One harpoon won't hold it for long against the currents."

"There's not much of the shore left," Lestrade remarked.

Sherlock glanced down the pier, tapping his lips. "We need other transport," he said and attempted to stand. He sat back down rather heavily. 

"Circulation," I murmured.

"Yes," he grumbled. "Do either of you have any pennies or tuppence?" He rubbed his thighs vigorously for a minute before trying to stand again, with better effect.

There was a jingling sound from above us. "I've got two two-pence coins and three pence," Lestrade said.

Sherlock raised an eyebrow at me as he stepped over my bench.

"Oh, right," I said and half stood to see what I might have. "Three tuppence and four pennies," I announced.

Sherlock held out his hand and I dropped them in. 

"Do you want any of the silver?" I asked.

"If it was, I would. As it is, no. I'll take the two-pound coin just in case though," he said.

I handed it over.

He dropped the coins into his jacket pocket, stepped onto the gunwale and scaled the makeshift ladder to the dock.

"Two two-pound coins and the coppers," Lestrade said. There was more jingling. "Where are you going?"

"To find the dock-master," Sherlock said. "We need a couple longshoremen and a cart."

I clambered up the ladder and looked down the dock to where Sherlock was already dissolving into the darkness.

"Take this," Lestrade said, holding the lantern out to me.

I took it and ran after Sherlock.

*** 

When I caught up with him, he was rapping on a low door. A faint orange glow showed at the edges of a small, oilskin-covered window next to it. 

There was a grumbling from within.

Sherlock knocked more forcefully.

Something heavy fell inside.

I did not understand the words uttered next, but the tone clearly conveyed fuck-off.

Sherlock jingled the coins in his pocket. Perhaps it was the effect of the surrounding silence, but the sound seemed much louder than what a few coins might be able to produce.

I heard more grumbling and a bolt being lifted. The door creaked open and the inhabitant peered out, first at me in the light of the lantern and then at Sherlock, still half-hidden in shadow. The man's expression changed as his gaze travelled up Sherlock's long figure, pausing briefly at the hilt of the sword visible inside the open cloak. He glanced at me again, noting the weapons I carried as though for the first time.

Sherlock spoke, his voice deeper than his usual conversational tone. His Latin was too fast for me, but I caught the words for cart, fish, feast and fort. 

I watched with fascination the progression of expressions on the man's face as Sherlock spoke, his words enunciated with his typical precision, their speed that of a native speaker of the tongue.

Over his shoulder the man called, "Cattus," then turned back to Sherlock and held out his hand.

Sherlock drew several coins out of his pocket, placing three tuppence coins and two pennies on the man's palm. 

One of the two-pence coins was newly minted and the man held it closer to the lamplight. Apparently satisfied with what he observed, he shouted the name again. This time a youth appeared behind him, rubbing a hand across his face. He looked a younger, taller version of the man who had answered the door. The man grabbed his son's hand and placed the shiny coin in it. The youth's eyes opened at that.

The father said, "Mato."

This seemed comprehensible to the lad. He nodded, pulled a cloak from behind the door and slipped past us into the night.

Sherlock spoke again and the word fire caught my ear. 

The man nodded again and stepped aside with an outstretched arm.

"Warm yourself by the fire, John," Sherlock said, reaching for the lantern. "Listen for the cart coming round. I'll check on Lestrade." He clapped me on the back, nudging me in the direction of the open door and headed back the way we had come.

I went in. 

My host pointed to a stool by a smoking brazier and I sat. He added a small log to it and left me. 

The room was stuffy, but the warmth felt good on my back, which was the wettest part of me other than my feet.

The man returned from a corner of the room with a mug of what turned out to be some variety of beer. 

I thought it best not to drink it, but touched it to my lips and smiled in thanks. Though the coins may have included refreshments, I felt inclined to offer something in return. A packet of mints in my jacket pocket appeared to have withstood my dousing, so I peeled back the foil wrapper and took one of the candies to demonstrate its edible nature and offered the open roll to my host. 

He pried the top sweet off, studied it a moment and put it in his mouth. His eyebrows went up and I thought he might spit it out when he smiled and nodded at me.

 

The log had burnt steadily and my jacket was fairly dry when I heard the clop of hooves and the rumble of cartwheels over stone. I took leave of my host and pressed the mints into his hand. He seemed pleased. He did not slip a knife between my ribs on my way out, in any event.

The night had turned darker. Clouds blanketed the stars; the moon was but a faint smudge low in the sky. I thought my partial drying out might soon be undone. I caught up with the cart as it turned onto the pier.

I tilted my head at Cattus when I passed him walking beside the donkey cart. On the other side, leading the animal, was a husky man I assumed was Mato. The cart's lantern lit the planks of the dock to either side and a good distance ahead. I did not care for the way it made the darkness beyond look denser.

At the light's limit, I stretched out my hand. It disappeared before me and the tips of my fingers tingled with the cold of it. I pressed forward, arms out to either side, hands waving gently in the air to hopefully strike a post it I strayed too near the edge. I could not hear the water nor the rumble of the cartwheels any longer.

I walked tapping the heel of my left foot to the toe of my right in an effort to keep my progress in as straight a line as possible. I think it was the memory of the library corridor that brought the opening tune to my lips. I whistled softly in time to my steps. 

A dim aura of light broke the darkness ahead, to my right and near the level of my shoes.

I heard the stamping of feet and a sudden whiff of river. 

"What's taking that cart so long?" Lestrade asked.

I grinned in the dark at the sound of his voice and headed towards it.

"Greg," I whispered, as though calling out might alert something I did not want to hear me.

"John," Lestrade exclaimed, clearly feeling no such qualms.

An outstretched arm brushed against my thigh.

"Take care, you're near the edge," he said.

I took hold of his arm and shuffled forwards. "The cart's just behind me," I said.

"About bloody time," Lestrade replied.

"Where's..." I began to ask and stopped when I spotted Sherlock down in the boat, its benches lit by the lantern Greg was dangling over the side of the dock.

Sherlock dropped something into a sack; from the looks of it, another item that had been appropriated to our purpose. He was crouched in the bottom of the skiff, leaning over the rowing bench. He hunched lower, gripping the edge of the bench with the hand holding the sack and peering intently into the shadows. 

"Bring the lantern forward a bit, Lestrade," he said.

The light shifted and I saw it. Beside Sherlock, a narrow band of darkness was curling up from the bench towards the smooth planes of his cheek.

My hand closed about my dagger. A second later there was a thud. Sherlock drew back. My blade quivered in the wood of the bench less than two fingers' breadth from where his face had been. Pinned by the point of the dagger, a small, serpentine thing writhed. It did not appear to be attached to anything other than the wood.

Sherlock looked up, his eyes gleaming. "John," he said.

It was the first time I had had a chance to show him how good I was with a knife.

*** 

The heavens were growing pale when we reached the northwestern gate. The walls of the fortress loomed to the north and the skies above us were nearly clear of the rain clouds that had been drifting south as we had crossed the city. We had been told that the gates would open with the dawn, so our wait would not be long. Combined with the fact that the storm had held off, I was feeling surprisingly well for having spent a sleepless night, chilled and damp.

The admiration in Sherlock's expression when he had handed my knife back to me at the dock may have been contributing to my sense of well-being.

By the gate, we dispersed to wait. Mato fed his donkey and the rest of us leaned against the wall to take a bit of rest, except for Sherlock, who checked each of the knots attaching the net we had used to lift the beast from the river to the posts of the cart. It made me wonder whether Sherlock was convinced the animal was dead and whether he thought it might be able to untie the knots if it was not. 

When voices began to be heard from within the towers by the gate, Sherlock joined us to say that Mato refused to take us outside the city walls through the cemetery beyond, however, he had been amenable to exchanging the cart and the net for the rest of the pennies and our cloaks, which had been serving to cover the creature.

"Not the donkey?" Lestrade asked.

Sherlock shook his head. "She's pregnant. I didn't have enough to exchange for both of them." 

I watched Mato carefully detaching the animal's harness from the cart. 

"So we get to take on the donkey's role," Lestrade said, twisting his mouth to one side and scrutinising the wagon. "It's not exactly steamlined." He gestured at the hefty planks that made up the body of the cart and the thick spokes of the wheels.

"It's not even a kilometre to Bart's," Sherlock said.

"Is there a road?" Lestrade enquired.

Sherlock hummed. "There should be paths for the gravediggers and the mourners."

"And then what?" Lestrade asked. He held up his hand. "On second thought, don't tell me. I'll find out soon enough."

"Excellent," Sherlock said and strode over to the cart.

"Oh, no you don't," I called, rushing to join him. "You are not lifting anything until I have you somewhere where I can check your ribs properly."

Sherlock regarded me for a moment. "As you wish, Doctor," he said, ducking his head and smiling as he turned away.

I stopped feeling the cold completely at that point.

*** 

Indeed, Lestrade and I were perspiring before long, although it would have been much worse if the way had not been paved. The nearest entrance to the graveyard was a short distance from the city gates and a stone path had cut northwesterly from it to a small central shrine. From there, several other paths radiated outwards to points on the northern side of the cemetery. We took the one heading due north. 

Sherlock appeared totally confident of where St Bartholomew's walls would rise a millenium hence. I had already learned how well he knew modern London. Perhaps he knew it in every age. So, he led and Lestrade and I followed, trundling our sea monster along behind us.

The sun was not far above the horizon when we reached the low wall that marked the northern boundary of the cemetery.

"Have a rest," Sherlock said, stooping to pick a pebble from the ground. He stood, tossing it from hand to hand and pivoting slowly. He peered past us with narrowed eyes as though he would memorise every detail of the terrain as he turned. 

Greg raised an eyebrow at me and shrugged his shoulders.

We released the shafts without further encouragement and pulled ourselves up onto the flat stones along the top of the wall.

"London's risen," Sherlock murmured, more to himself than to us, it seemed. "A basement level, most likely." I could not catch what he said after that. It blended into a pleasant hum as of a bee among flowers.

The sun was warm on the side of my face, my legs happy to not be supporting me. I stretched my arms out to the side and let my head fall back. 

High above us, a bird circled.

_Hopefully, not a vulture._

I looked to Sherlock. 

He was turning faster now, jacket flaring, a hand shielding his eyes as he gazed up at sky. With a cry and a flurry of feathers, Siròc landed on his shoulder, the sunlight gleaming on her wings, and then it seemed as though Sherlock opened his.

*** 

There was a loud crash and a shrill cry that sounded like Sherlock's name.

The floor beneath me was very hard and very white. I looked over at Greg. He was looking up. I did the same, squinting into the brightness.

Sherlock's back was to us - an ordinary, suit-jacketed back. "Ah, I have a signal," I heard him say.

A young woman in a white lab coat was crouched on the floor picking up surgical tools that were scattered all about her. She dropped several on a metal tray near her.

The sound reverberated in my head and I grimaced.

Even so, I thought I should offer to help her and leaned forward. I clapped my hand over my mouth and groaned.

Greg glanced at me. "Still new to it, eh?"

I nodded. 

"Sit still. It'll pass," he said and scooted forward along the floor. "Molly," he said, picking a speculum off the floor and handing it to her. "Have you met Dr Watson yet?"

She looked up at him and smiled, then she looked at me. "No," she said, "You need water." She got up.

Greg collected more implements, setting them on the tray very quietly.

"Dr Moynihan, please," Sherlock said.

Molly was back with an open bottle of water. "Drink up," she instructed. 

I obeyed.

"Molly Hooper, may I present Dr John Watson, who has just been hauling a cart full of dead, primordial beast across Londinium with me. John, Dr Hooper, my favourite pathologist."

I reached up with a hand and Molly bent down to shake it.

"Don't try to get up yet," she cautioned.

"Aidan, good morning. Can the Natural History Museum do without you for a few hours? I have something with many features of interest over at Bart's morgue," Sherlock said.

"Pleased to meet you," I said and snapped my mouth shut. Speaking and looking up had been a bit too much.

"Something very old and very recently dead. Brilliant. See you soon." Sherlock snapped his mobile shut and looked around.

"Ah, Molly, I see you've met John. Would you like to assist me while he recuperates?"

*** 

It was mid-morning and I was still standing. Greg had led me away for breakfast in the canteen before he left for New Scotland Yard and after several cups of tea and another bottle of water, I had not felt that bad.

Dr Moynihan had been in the morgue with Sherlock when I had returned and Molly had simply smiled and pointed towards the open doorway off the main morgue from which I could hear Sherlock exclaiming something about Christmas.

The cart appeared to have disappeared.

"People from the National Antiquities Museum came to collect it. They were extremely excited," she said.

"Did they ask what it was doing here?" I asked.

"Sherlock said one of his clients had asked him to handle their possible donation of the artifact to the museum as long as their condition of strict anonymity could be respected," she explained. 

I chuckled and glanced towards the door.

"They know him. He's done this before. Their staff had it packed up and carried out of here faster than I would have thought possible," she said. "He charms them."

"Right," I said, listening to Sherlock's voice. I turned back to Molly. "Is that what it is? A charm?"

"You haven't been at the Manor long, have you?" she asked.

I thought she might already know the answer to that question, but I replied anyway. "Only a few weeks," I said, shaking my head because it did seem much longer.

"Do you miss it?" I asked, realising that I had taken what should have been her job.

She gazed at the doorway. "I have the best of both worlds now," she said. "He's often at Bart's and I help out as I can."

"John!" Sherlock shouted from the other room.

"Hurry," she laughed, waving me away. "That must be the tenth time he's called for you."

"Oh," I said and with a grin went to see into how many parts they had divided the creature and to make sure that none of them were still moving.

*** 

I have awoken in some peculiar places, but opening my eyes and realising I was on a steel table in a morgue was definitely in the top ten, maybe even the top five. I blinked against the bright light above me, then gave up and closed my eyes again. My feet were cold. Someone had removed my socks and shoes...or perhaps I had. How I had came to be in my current position was a blank. I hoped I had not keeled over in the midst...ah, the midst of the dissection. I turned my head, felt something silky against my cheek, inhaled the scent of lavender. Perhaps I should just sleep some more. The paper sheets over me rustled.

"You missed the best part, John," Sherlock said.

I re-opened one eye for a second. 

Sherlock was leaning over me.

"It's a good thing all the parts we lopped off fell into the boat," he informed me.

"Why's that?" I mumbled, my memory starting to return. There had been another bloke, old fellow, with us.

"They've begun to regenerate," he said, "every single one of them. And the parts we removed from the body this morning, may well do the same."

"Re...what!" I said, sitting up, eyes opening wide. "Where?" I asked, scanning the room.

Sherlock had stepped back fast enough to escape a head butting for which my skull and I were grateful.

"They're in the cold chamber now, except for one that I want to study further at home. That one's in a cooler. The end of the tentacle has structures similar to a leech's mouth. I believe it was intending to feed on me when you interrupted it."

"You're bringing that home?" I asked.

"I have a sub-zero freezer off the lab. It may damage the tissue, but considering the animal's adaptability, I believe I will have to keep it frozen," Sherlock explained, "so the sooner we get home, the sooner it can be frozen, too."

"So it isn't dead?" I asked.

"You missed the discussion Dr Moynihan and I had on that point. The animal's attributes challenge the definition of death. I would have appreciated your views on the matter, but you had nearly fallen into the creature's abdominal cavity just prior to our first observations of regenerative behaviour, so I installed you up here," he said, patting the table beside me, "and Dr Moynihan and I carried on."

"Naturally," I said and slipped carefully off the table. The floor was very cold. "You wouldn't know where I put my shoes?"

"You didn't put them anywhere," Sherlock said and reached under the table. "Here." He dropped the shoes onto the table. "Your socks are over the heating vent. They should be dry by now." He pointed in the pertinent direction.

I tip-toed over to the vent to retrieve the socks. 

"Do you know how the creature was bringing bodies here...to now?" I asked, sitting on a stool and slipping the socks on. I tried not to think about what might be dried into them and concentrated on how warm they were.

"Lestrade hasn't been able to gather the information on excavations or repairs affecting underground waterways yet," Sherlock replied. "I may have to help him to speed that up."

"Doesn't he have staff to help with that?" I walked back to the table to retrieve my shoes and saw that it was Sherlock's jacket that I had been using as a pillow.

"Nominally, yes, but they're all idiots," Sherlock said. "Unbelievably slow and they've no imagination when it comes to thinking where to look for things. Well, you've met some of them."

"I didn't have a chance to observe their researching skills," I replied. It was true, but I also had not really been paying much attention to them.

"I have," he said and picked up his jacket and shook it out.

I looked around, still not fully awake. Something seemed to be missing.

"Weapons by the door," Sherlock said, strolling in that direction. "If you could take mine, too," he added, "I'll take this." He picked up a small, metal chest from a table on the way. 

I took note of the three, wide straps circling the container. Sherlock was not underestimating the danger of the thing. I collected the swords, the crossbow and quiver and thus laden followed him into the main room of the mortuary.

"'Afternoon," he said to Molly as we passed.

She smiled at that and tilted her chin at what I was carrying. "Good luck with all that," she said.

"Ta," I replied as I backed out the doors, trying not to drop anything, but I wasn't sure that was all she was referring to.

*** 

Manoeuvring myself out of the taxi with our hardware was a struggle, but once achieved, I found the door to Baker Street already open. I would never have thought that the sight of a dim foyer could give me such joy. I hurried in, pushing the front door shut with my foot and the inner door open with my shoulder. Sherlock was at the bottom of the stairs looking through some post.

He made a dismissive noise and dropped the envelopes back on the mantelpiece. "You can leave those here," he added, pointing to the weapons. "They need to go back to the armoury. I sterilised them in the autoclave at Bart's while you were sleeping. Your dagger and the bolts, too. The harpoon's still embedded in the beast in the freezer."

"You sure you don't want these up...near the lab?"

He looked at me, scowling for a moment then nodded. "We'll go with your instinct on that, then."

"Ever thought about getting some tranquiliser guns?" I asked on the way up the stairs.

 

Baskerville bounded out of the shadows at the far side of the library when we entered. 

I turned to drop our weapons into my chair until we decided where to stow them when I heard Baskerville bark. When I looked, he was backing away from Sherlock, alternately snarling and whining. 

Sherlock lifted the chest he was carrying higher.

Baskerville backed further away, his teeth bared.

"I'm putting this straight into the freezer," Sherlock said and swept around the corner of the half-open laboratory door.

I walked to the doorway and saw Sherlock open a door just inside the supply room. It was not one I had used, or even noticed; the small freezer that was part of the refrigeration unit in the main lab had been sufficient for the experiments with which I had assisted.

A chill draft wafted past me. 

Baskerville whined.

"Disrobe, John," Sherlock said, shutting the door and locking it. He toed his shoes off and kicked them towards me. "Quickly!"

I started from the top down with an efficiency I had learned in the treatment of chemical burns. Top bared, I untied my shoes, retrieved a few items from my pockets, and shucked my trousers and pants in one go. 

Sherlock was walking towards me, throwing his garments ahead of him onto the same heap mine were forming. He stepped to the side, opened the hatch to the incinerator built into the wall, removed some items from his pockets and dropped the rest of his clothes in as he took them off. 

I scooped up the pile of clothes at my feet, brought them to him and dumped them in. "I liked that jacket," I said as Sherlock secured the hatch after them and began the incineration cycle.

"Everything will be replaced," he said.

I held out my hand with my keys, coins and phone in it.

"Autoclave," Sherlock said, pointing. "You back up your data, don't you?"

"There wasn't much on it," I said.

"Might want to make it a routine," he replied, tapping out a message on his mobile, hitting send and handing it to me.

"Stuff like this happen often?" I asked, moving to the autoclave and placing the items inside.

Sherlock slid the items from his pockets from the table into his hand and came over to add them to the load.

"Close it," he said. "Us, next."

A fierce roar issued from the library.

I stared at Sherlock.

"Chapalu will have heard Baskerville's whining," he said.

I went to look out the door. 

Chapalu was sniffing and licking Baskerville, growling low between swipes. He had stopped whining.

Her great head swung towards me, lips drawn back. Her growl deepened.

"Definitely the shower for us, right now," Sherlock said, looking over my shoulder into the library.

"Do you ever bring her hunting with you?" I asked as we crossed the lab.

Sherlock shut the door of the wet room behind us. "Does she ever come hunting with me, you mean?" he said, turning on the water.

I noted the distinction. "Yes, I guess it would be her choice to come along or not."

"Indeed," Sherlock replied, opening a cupboard and adding two jars to the shelves near the shower head. "Chapalu's territory is the Manor estate, especially the house itself. She patrols it closely, although one doesn't always see her. She likes to use the passageways between the walls."

I imagined encountering her between the library and the music room.

"Don't worry. You are well-scented. She would have known you belonged...here," Sherlock said, holding his hand out to test the temperature of the water.

"So she's always near the house?" I asked.

"She checks the perimeter sometimes, but mainly leaves the area near the riverbank to one of the cubs I mentioned earlier and the heath to the other," he replied, stepping under the spray and raising his arms. "You wanted to examine my ribs, as I recall."

I stared for a moment at him and his beautiful proportions. He looked back at me, standing still as a statue with the water sluicing over him, except that statues do not grow red and purple bruises across their perfect skin.

"Yes," I said and went to him.

****

~~~~~~oo0oo~~~~~~

****

****  



End file.
